
Class __ „._ 

Book_ 



Copyright^ . 



C OF/RIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

In the Development of the American Church. 



The Sunday-School 



IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
AMERICAN CHURCH 



By the 

REV. OSCAR S. MICHAEL, 

Rector of Old St. John's Church, 
Philadelphia. 



MILWAUKEE: 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN COMPANY, 
1904. 




LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 3 1904 

Copyright Entry 
Tims. ?C/ t tqctl 
CUSS CU XXc No: 

COPY 6. 



Copyright 1904 

BY 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 



* 



^ 



TO MRS. SARAH S. HOUSTON, 

A DEVOTED FRIEND OF THE MASTER'S WORK, 

THIS BOOK 

IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY 27 

Movement to unify the means of religious 
instruction under secular leaders of the pres- 
ent day. 

Religion the primal element of education. 

Religious activities in the educational life 
of the colonies. 

Causes of present annihilation of religion 
in popular education. 

Lack of harmony in organized bodies. 

Immediate effect on educational functions. 

Results of the Revolutionary War and the 
development of Democracy. 

Recognition of the danger of irreligious 
public education. 

Place of the Sunday-school in the new 
movement. 

Recent efforts to ensure its permanence as 
an educational factor. 

What shall be done with the Sunday- 
school ? 

Its development not yet seriously analyzed. 

Its place in Church history. 
7 



8 Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

T. THE GENESIS OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS 37 

Definition of Sunday-school. 

Origin traced to the English Keformation. 

Decay of the parochial system in England. 

Sunday-schools, opposed by Puritans, 
adopted by the Church of England. 

State of religious instruction in the Amer- 
ican colonies. 

Revival efforts during the 18th century. 

The "great awakening" under Jonathan Ed- 
wards. The Methodists. 

Nothing like Sunday-schools in evidence 
before the Revolution. 

II. EARLY BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 49 

Parochial system further demolished by the 
Revoli iionary War. 

Skepticism and deism rife. 

Degeneracy of the young. 

Bishop White attacks the problem. 

The Church most effected by the prevailing 
difficulties. 

State of the Church after the Revolution. 

Helplessness of existing parish agencies. 

Bishop White and the First Day Society. 

First Day Schools. 
. Opposition of the Puritans. 

The Philadelphia Evangelical Society. 

Robert May. 

Individual efforts of secular leaders. 

Tribulations of early Sunday-school pro- 
moters. 

Sunday-schools up to 1814 not connected 
with church organizations. 

The first Church Sunday-school. 

Local Unions under private auspices. 



Contents. V 

CHAPTER PAGE 

II. EARLY BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA— (Con- 

tinued : ) 

Development of Sunday-schools in New 
York. 

Bishop White and the first general Sunday- 
school society. 

The Philadelphia Sunday and Adult Society 
under the leadership of Churchmen. 

The American Sunday-school Union formed 
out of the Sunday and Adult Society. 

Evolution of Sunday-schools worked out in 
England. 

Advance from secular to religious instruc- 
tion. 

Opposition disappears. 

Constitution and routine of early Sunday- 
schools. 

III. EVOLUTION OF CHURCH SUNDAY- 

SCHOOLS 77 

Transforming effect on the Church by the 
early Sunday-school movement. 

Burden of the Church's work centered in 
the institutions. 

Progress of Church Sunday-schools in 
Philadelphia. William A. Muhlenberg. 
George Boyd. Alonzo Potter. 

Development in New England. 

Beginnings in New Jersey. 

Progress in New York. 

The first general Church Sunday-school 
society. 

Bishop Hobart and interdenominational 
work. 

The New York Protestant Episcopal Sun- 
day-School Society. 

The Philadelphia P. E. Sunday and Adult 
Society. 



10 Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

III. EVOLUTION OF CHURCH SUNDAY- 
SCHOOLS— ( Continued : ) 

Church Sunday-school societies not well 
patronized. 

The New York Society more aggressive. 

Development in the South. 

Early attempts in Ohio. 

Independence of New England Sunday- 
schools. 

Routine of early Church schools. Place of 
assembly. 

Departments based on sex. 

Government varied. 

Ordinary methods of administration. 

Systems of rewards. 

Sessions. Vacations. Church attendance. 

Strenuousness of early Sunday-school work. 

Character of the moral training. 

Not long in the category of charity schools. 

Aid to the Church in the decade following 
1812. 

Muhlenberg in Central Pennsylvania. 

Activity of early leaders in New York 
state. 

Philadelphia schools and the Liberian Mis- 
sion. 

Inception of the Domestic and Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society. 

Growth of the Sunday-school societies. 

Centralization of the various Church 
Agencies. 

The General Seminary. 

The General Protestant Episcopal Sunday- 
School Union. 

Bolder maintenance of distinctive Church 
principles. 



Contents. 11 

CHAPTER PAGE 

III. EVOLUTION OF CHURCH SUNDAY- 

SCHOOLS— ( Continued : ) 

Effect of interdenominational aggressive- 
ness. 

Disingenuousness of the American Sun- 
day-School Union. 

Fears of early Church leaders. 

Need of a general Church society. 

IV. THE GENERAL PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION Ill 

Efforts to form an American S. P. C. K. 
Society. 

Incorporation of the general union. 

A great missionary agency. 

Enlistment of Whittingham and other 
young men in the cause. 

The opening of another period of- great 
progress in the Church. 

Book depositories and publications. 

The N. Y. P. E. Press. 

Career of Whittingham, the Sunday-school 
apostle. 

Seminary life. 

Bishop Hobart's choice. 

Difficulties and embarrassments. 

Complete scheme of uniform lessons. 

Whittingham's personal traits. 

His Churchmahship. 

Travels as agent of the Union. 

Labors in editing. 

Parish work at Orange, N. J. 

Manager of the N. Y. P. E. Press. 

Rectorship of St. Luke's, N. Y. 

Contact with the Old Catholics of Germany 
and Switzerland. 



12 Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

[V. THE GENERAL PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL 
SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION— ( Continued : ) 

Henry Gregory as Whittingham's succes- 
sor. 

Evolutionary progress in the Sunday-school 
of 1835. 

Place of assembly changes. 

Internal management and routine per- 
fected. 

Statistics. 

V. THE PLACE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL IN 

CHURCH HISTORY PRIOR TO 1835 132 

Movements not yet fully understood. 

Darkest period of the Church's career. 

Discouragement of early leaders. 

Astonishing changes in less than a gener- 
ation. 

Boldness of leaders in vaunting the 
Church's catholicity. 

Properly ascribed to the development of 
Sunday-school activities. 

Neglect of children and other defects in the 
early years of reconstruction. 

Evidences of the benefits of Sunday-school 
activity in New England. 

Alonzo Potter's career. 

His call to the ministry of the Church. 

Sunday-school enterprise at St. Paul's, 
Boston. 

State of religious life in the New England 
metropolis. 

Ideals of Sunday-school work. 

General results of Potter's activity. 

George W. Doane at Trinity Church, Bos- 
ton. 



Contents. IB 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V. THE PLACE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL IN 
CHURCH HISTORY.— ( Continued : ) 

Qualifications for instructing the young 
and methods. 

Early enthusiasm and success. 

The Evangelical leaders of Philadelphia, 

Dryness of catechizing and lack of vital 
piety in the colonies. 

Hopefulness of the Evangelical leaders. 

Emotional fervor. 

Pilmore's love of the Church. 

Allen's Catholicity. 

Tyng's early career as a Sunday-school en- 
thusiast. 

Tyng's later achievements. 

Bedell's wonderful Sunday-school enter- 
prises at St. Andrew's, Philadelphia. 

Lofty conception of the Sunday-school's 
place. 

Devout personal relationship between 
teacher and scholar the secret of the success 
attained. 

New York deeply moved by the fervor of 
early Sunday-school leaders. 

State of religion in the metropolis before 
1812. 

Sunday-school at the General Seminary. 

Bishop Hobart as a Sunday-school enthu- 
siast. 

Progress in New Jersey under Bishop 
Doane. In Maryland under Bishop Whitting- 
ham. In Delaware. 

Development in the South. 

Causes of the Church's debility in the 
Southern dioceses. 

Example of Southern gentlemen. 



14 Contents, 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V. THE PLACE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL IN 
CHURCH HISTORY.— ( Continued : ) 

Educational improvement of the well-to-do. 

Progress of Sunday-schools in the West. 

Part played by the Sunday-school as the 
handmaid of the Church. 

The only successful work in the Church 
up to 1835. 

Missionary spirit of Sunday-school classes. 

Change in the Church's missionary policy 
in 1835. 



VI. MOVEMENTS TOWARD CENTRALIZATION. 165 

What the Sunday-School Union had done 
for individual schools. 

Formation of auxiliary diocesan societies. 

Church versus federal idea in the Sunday- 
school movement. 

First effort at centralization touched 
Christian doctrine. 

Begun by the Philadelphia S. S. Society. 

Stronger and more positive Church teach- 
ing aimed at. 

No general plan of enforcing uniformity 
recommended. 

Last appearance of Bishop White. 

Turning point in the Church's career. 

Prayer Book Churchmanship. 

Broad conception of faith and orders. 

Relation of rectors to their Sunday-schools. 

Passing of the parochial S. S. societies. 

Survival in certain quarters banal. 

Second effort at centralization touched the 
S. S. Union as an accredited general Church 
institution. 



Contents 15 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. MOVEMENTS TOWARD CENTRALIZATION. 

— (Continued:) 

Third movement toward centralization 
touched the General Seminary. 

How the movement concerned Sunday- 
school endeavor. 

General education society planned. 

Fourth movement toward centralization 
touched public education. 

Place of the Sunday-school in popular edu- 
cation. 

Educational leaders try to stay the de- 
velopment of irreligious public school. 

Fifth movement toward centralization 
touched the general missionary society. 

Commission appointed at the General Con- 
vention in 1838. 

VII. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND THE GEN- 
ERAL CONVENTION 183 

Peers' influence in the Commission para- 
mount. 

Peers' career. 

Abnormal character of the Sunday-school 
affirmed. 

The parish as the normal unit of education. 

The Sunday-school as a missionary agency 
in extra-parochial condition. 

Free and open church system. 

Vote of the General Convention of 1841 re- 
garded as calling for a general movement to 
revive traditional methods of education. 

Hopefulness of Church leaders to unite 
Protestant Christians in a common system of 
parish schools. 

Relation of the Commission's plan to the 
Oxford movement. 



16 Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VII. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND THE GEN- 
ERAL CONVENTION.— ( Continued : ) 

Effort to change the Church's name. 

Aim of American scholarship to remove the 
stigma from the title "Catholic." 

No opposition to Protestant Episcopal. 

Desire for an every-day name, non-sectarian 
and non-localizing. 

First attempts to secure a broader title. 

Changed attitude of former enthusiasts to- 
ward the Sunday-school. 

Resistance to the new movement in the 
vis inertiae of the laity. 

Practical views of religious conditions in the 
United States. 

Effect of personal relationship between 
teachers and scholars. 

Resistance defeats incorporation of the S. 
S. Union as a general Church institution. 

Plan of the more conservative Church lead- 
ers. 

Project tabled. 

Failure to create a sentiment for tradition- 
al methods. 

Reactionary forces stirring up much en- 
thusiasm for Sunday-schools as constituted. 

Failure of the plan to form a general edu- 
cational society. 

Opposition in the General Convention of 
1844 to change of the Church's name. Tracts 
and other publications. 

Peaceful settlement of the troublous ques- 
tions. 

Part played by the Sunday-school in the 
controversy. 



Contents. 17 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VIII. CONTROVERSY 206 

Tolerant spirit of the Convention of 1844. 

Perversion of Newman brings on a crisis. 

The S. S. Union's publications suspected. 

Bishop Meade's denunciatory Open Letters. 

Baptismal regeneration and symbolism of 
Sunday-school books under the ban. 

Exclusion of sectarian bodies assailed. 

Other errors condemned. 

The S. S. Union's Open Letter in reply. 

Bishop White quoted by both sides. 

Dread of growing monarchical and hier- 
archical tendencies. 

Orange riots. 

The Evangelical Knowledge Society found- 
ed. 

Cleavage between two theories of Sunday- 
school work. 

The Rev. Henry J. Morton's statement of 
one theory. 

Adherents of the second theory aggressive 
against efforts to minimize the Sunday-school. 

Significant tendencies of the publications 
of the time. 

General interest in the Sunday-school en- 
hanced by the controversy. Decline of the 
S. S. Union. 

Educational plans of traditional leaders 
wrecked. 

Activity of adherents of the second theory. 

IX. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND THE MEMOR- 

IAL PAPERS 221 

Muhlenberg's optimism and new attempt to 

unite Christians. 

The Memorial to the General Convention of 

1853. 



18 Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IX. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND THE MEMOR- 
IAL PAPERS.— (Continued:) 

Ultimate design of the Memorial. 

Commission appointed acts. 

Points of contact between the Sunday- 
school and the design of the Memorial. 

Bishop Doane's Paper devoted mainly to 
the Sunday-school problem. 

How the Church prescribes for the Scrip- 
tural scheme of education. 

General estimate of the Catechism. 

Duty of the parents. 

Influence of Godparents. 

Reason of failure. 

Parish pastor the arbiter rerum education- 
ally. 

Abnormal position of the Sunday-school. 

Bishop Doane's views startling yet gener- 
ally held. 

Faith as to ways and means. 

Solution of many vexing problems. 

Bishop Doane's sincerity and consistency. 

Views anachronistic. 

Did not represent contemporary advanced 
Churchmanship. 

Views of other contributors to the Memor- 
ial Papers. 



X. THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 234 

Denominational Sunday-school work in 
1860. 

Destitution in New England. 
Work of noted Sunday-school leaders. 
The Sunday-school in the South, where 
slavery was humanely conducted. 



Contents. 19 

CHAPTER PAGE 

X. THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD.— (Continued:) 

Where slavery was cruel. 

Value of the Sunday-school to slaves. 

The Upper Mississippi Valley and the Mid- 
dle West. 

A representative new settlement. 

The Sunday-school and the family instincts 
of the settlers. 

Work of the American Union. 

Negligence of the Church. 

Inopportuneness of the agitation for tradi- 
tional conditions. 

What the Sunday-school might have ac- 
complished. 

Wisdom of the Church of England. 

Activity of Low Churchmen in the East. 

Representative examples. 

A lady of Philadelphia and her achieve- 
ments. 

Her sister's work. 

Energy of a gentleman of Pittsburg. 

Sundays at St. James', Pittsburg. 

The Rev. Dr. Richard Newton. 



XL THE AMERICAN CHURCH SUNDAY- 
SCHOOL INSTITUTE 250 

Individualism and parochialism of the 
work before 1870. 

Influence for centralization of Mr. George 
C. Thomas. 

The Pennsylvania Diocesan S. S. Society. 

The American Church S. S. Institute. 



20 Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XL THE AMERICAN CHURCH SUNDAY- 
SCHOOL INSTITUTE.— ( Continued : ) 

Similarity to the Church of England Insti- 
tute. 

Missionary endeavor. 

The American Church S. S. Magazine. 

XII. THE MODERN SUNDAY-SCHOOL COMMIS- 
SION MOVEMENT 255 

XIII. COURSES OF STUDY AND TEXT-BOOKS. 267 

Unique place of religious instruction in 
the evolution of pedagogy. 

High state of S. S. teaching. 

Material for instruction compared. 

Aim of the early teaching not secular. 

Shortcoming of modern methods. 

Early teaching monitorial. 

Use of the church service. 

First work oral and memoriter. 

Dearth of American text-books. 

The lack quickly supplied. 

Complete scheme of lessons in 1826. 

Higher studies pursued. 

What the uniform scheme of lessons accom- 
plished. 

Change of the tenor of publications about 
1840. 

Change in the Sunday-school routine. 

Failure of the General S. S. Union. 

Work of the Union in circulating library 
books. 

Also of the E. K. S. 

No uniformity in instruction prior to 1870. 

Bishop W. C. Doane's series of lesson books. 

The Union Lessons. 



Contents. 21 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII. COURSES OF STUDY AND TEXT-BOOKS. 

— {Continued:) 

The International Series. 

The Uniform Lesson Series by the Joint 
Diocesan Committee. 

Various expositions of the lessons. 

XIV. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL STAFF. TEACH- 

ERS AND OFFICERS 283 

The problem as to teachers. 

Testimony of two experts on the character 
of modern teaching. 

Evils not the fault of the teachers . 

Not the fault of Sunday-school traditions. 

Monitorial teachers trained. 

Excellent qualifications of early volunteer 
teachers. 



Preface. 

These pages form an endeavor to compile out 
of first-hand documents the records of Ameri- 
can Sunday-school work from the standpoint of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church. Out of her 
loins came the early Sunday-school movements, 
though no attempt has yet been made to record 
the facts. Indeed, there have been times in the 
Church's career, when apology for the presence 
of Sunday-school activity was in fashion. 

Yet the truth remains. And a careful study 
of the facts in their bearing on the larger move- 
ments in Church history will throw much light 
on the latter, revealing causes and influences, 
whose effects must be considered, if mature 
judgment on these movements is to be rendered. 

It may be charged that in these pages too 
near a view-point of the Sunday-school has been 
taken or that the institution's achievements 

have been taken too seriously (to use the Kip- 
23 



24 Preface. 

ling phrase). In reply it is only necessary to 
point to the fact that all the Church's great lead- 
ers in the early days of her readjustment and 
growth up to 1838 took it very seriously. The 
records of the General Convention ascribe to 
it much importance in the years of rapid pro- 
gress. Adequate recognition of its work is but 
fair. 

In the very important study of the nation's 
educational development, at least, the truth as 
to Sunday-schools will be indispensable. Al- 
though (according to the common boast) reli- 
gion has been divorced from public education, 
the Church Catholic has not ceased to bear some 
of the educational fruitage that before the con- 
stitution of the state (and for some time after- 
ward) she solely yielded. It is a pregnant fact 
that the history of education will not fully or 
fairly be written, until the records of the educa- 
tional activity of each religious organization 
shall be unfolded. In this Sunday-school rec- 
ords come first. 

Conscious that he could do scant justice to 
the more recent developments in the Church's 
Sunday-school enterprise, the author has se- 
cured the aid of the Rev. Dr. William Walter 
Smith, A. M., M. D., Secretary of the Sunday 
School Commission of the Diocese of New York ; 
General Secretary of the Federation of Commis- 



Preface. 25 

sions and Institutes of the Church; Graduate 
Student of the Teachers' College, Columbia Uni- 
versity. Dr. Smith has contributed the chapter 
(XII.) on Sunday School Commissions. 
Philadelphia, September 15th, 1904. 



Introductory. 



Movement to Unify the Means of Religious 
Instruction Under Secular Leaders of the Pres- 
ent Day. Significant among the movements 
noticeable in the opening years of the twentieth 
century is the effort to centralize and consolidate 
the various means and methods of religious 
instruction. Of peculiar import is the fact 
that educational leaders, known especially for 
their work in the secular phases of American 
educational life, are taking prominent part in 
the development of this movement. It is evi- 
dently a return to first principles after a season 
of aberration. 

Religion the Primal Element of Education. 

In the first place it would seem to be the result 
of the now almost universal recognition of the 
fact that religion in its broadest sense is one of 
the elements (the primal element, we may say) 
of education — a fact treated with seriousness 

by educators of the present clay. It would seem 
27 



28 Introductory. 

to be also a recognition of the part played by 
religions forces in the earlier development of 
educational life in America — a part by no 
means finished, but seemingly about to be 
resumed. 

Religious Activities in the Educational Life 
of the Colonies. Who does not know that in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries popular edu- 
cation in the colonies was practically but a phase 
of their religious activity. The early school 
house was the chnrch building. The curriculum 
contained several studies of sacred nature and 
the school reader was the Bible. The school- 
master was either the clergyman of the commun- 
ity or else he was the assistant minister, who 
was called upon to do various duties connected 
with the church ; such as, digging graves in the 
church-yard, ringing the church bells, visiting 
the sick of the parish, reading the lessons or 
making the responses at the services as clerk or 
voorleser. And he was supported to a great 
extent by funds set apart for the churches. 1 

Causes of Present Annihilation of Religion 
in Popular Education. From these conditions 
to those prevailing at the close of the nineteenth 

^ee various Histories of Education in the different 
states, published recently by the United States Depart- 
ment of Education, especially those on Delaware, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. 



Introductory. 29 

century is a long step, involving practically a 
complete annihilation of religion in its relation 
to popular education. Just what caused the 
break from first principles is an interesting ques- 
tion, which has been answered in various ways, 
and which has been briefly discussed in the suc- 
ceeding chapters from one standpoint. The 
cause is to be sought in the incoherence of the 
different organized factors of religious endeavor, 
which showed itself not only in a lack of union 
and often in a belligerent disunion between the 
churches or denominations, but also in a lack 
of cohesion between the members of individual 
Christian bodies. This incoherence emphasized 
the structural weakness of these bodies — most 
of them in the struggling missionary stage of 
growth — when in the eighteenth century the col- 
onies began to grow stronger and more fully 
populated. 

Lack of Harmony in Organized Bodies. 
Two notable examples were the controversy over 
the sending of bishops to the colonies by the 
Church of England and the Unitarian contro- 
versy in New England. The unfortunate fail- 
ure to establish the episcopate in America, 
which would have "contributed more to the 
increase of the Church here than all the money 
raised by the venerable Society for the Propa- 
gation of the Gospel," was due about as much 



30 Introductory. 

to the differences of opinion, practical and doc- 
trinal, regarding the episcopate within the 
Church, as to the militant opposition of the dis- 
senters. 2 And the early phases of the Unitarian 
movement during the eighteenth century were 
but incidental to the inner conditions of Pur- 
itanism. 

Immediate Effect on Educational Functions. 

The result was that the organized Christian 
bodies, divided from each other and in them- 
selves, could not keep pace with the rapidly 
developing commercial and industrial forces of 
the new country. They could with difficulty 
maintain their ordinary work of caring for their 
congregations spiritually. Little by little the 
educational functions sloughed off and fell to 
the care partly of the state and partly of private 
individuals, under whose influences the schools 
sometimes taught anything but religion. 

Results of the Revolutionary War and the 
Development of Democracy. The Revolution- 
ary War and the development of American 
democracy completed the alienation of religion 
from popular education. The former in again 
weakening the separated hosts of Christianity, 
when during the latter half of the eighteenth 
century they were beginning to renew their 

-Coleman's The Church in America, p. 10. 



Introductory. 31 

strength by vigorous religious revivals, thus 
defeated their efforts to reassert their claims 
to the leadership in various social matters (in- 
cluding education). And Triumphant Democ- 
racy in securing itself in the control of the pub- 
lic schools was prevented from maintaining any 
form of religious teaching because of the dis- 
agreement of the various religious organizations 
as to what should be taught. In this the con- 
stitutional provision for religious freedom was 
made perversely operative. The churches went 
hand in hand with the irreligious propagandists 
in causing "freedom of religious belief in every 
form" to be construed as exclusion of religion in 
every form from the public schools. 

Recognition of the Danger of Irreligious 
Public Education. Xow after nearly a cen- 
tury's development of irreligious public educa- 
tion it would appear that the unnatural trend 
and the danger of such development is being 
recognized. The new light of the twentieth cen- 
tury is evidently beginning to make more mani- 
fest the folly of divided Christendom in defeat- 
ing its own educational aims and in undoing the 
very work it is manifestly called to do — to aid 
the state in the inculcation of morality by teach- 
ing Christian truth to the young of the nation. 
Evidently the first step in the right direction 



32 Introductory. 

must be the search for a common ground on 
which the various divisions of Christianity are 
to stand. 

Place of the Sunday-School in the New 
Movement. In the movement toward better 
conditions for religious instruction the Sunday- 
school must occupy a prominent place. It was 
adopted in 1790 as a temporary means, when 
the churches were weakened by war and the 
aggressive force of infidelity. It was introduced 
under protest of church leaders of various per- 
suasions, who at first feared the results of cer- 
tain phases of its development. It became a 
recognized regular means of church work and 
an accredited method of religious instruction, 
when the churches realized their inability to 
prescribe for the management of public educa- 
tion and when family religion was found to be 
beyond the hope of a general revival. Above 
all it proved its usefulness by its fruits, for with 
its introduction into church work directly after 
the war of 1812 began what was without doubt 
the greatest religious revival ever experienced 
by American Christendom. And it has stood in 
the breach, guarding Christian youth from 
ignorance of religious and moral truth, while 
the nation's educational means have been slowly 
forming. 



Introductory. 38 

Recent Efforts to Ensure Its Permanence as 
an Educational Factor. Of late, widespread 
efforts have been made to increase its usefulness 
and to ensure its permanence as a factor in the 
Church's work. Various Sunday-school com- 
missions, sectional societies or conferences, insti- 
tutes and similar gatherings have been every- 
where in evidence. Its missionary powers, long 
recognized by the different Christian bodies, 
which have largely taken advantage of its bene- 
fits in this direction, are being systematically 
developed, and more especially in the task of 
raising missionary funds. The ultimate end 
of this wide spread movement on the part of its 
votaries to enhance the beneficent activity of the 
Sunday-school is, of course, to prove that it has 
not outlived its usefulness, but that there is and 
will continue to be a most important place for 
it in the category of regular educational means. 

What Shall Be Done With the Sunday- 
School? Yet, as will appear, the Sunday- 
school has been regarded by several of the 
Christian bodies as being of anomalous char- 
acter. Efforts in the past have been made by 
certain leaders to supersede it and put into its 
place other means of more traditional type. Its 
constitution and peculiar relationship to the tra- 
ditional agencies of organized Christendom have 



34 Introductory. 

been at various times the theme of reproach or 
at least of doubtful comment. Its efficiency has 
been often impugned and its aims regarded with 
distrust and sometimes with derision. Not a 
few critics today maintain that the institution 
needs readjustment, if not complete retirement. 
"V7hat shall be done with the Sunday-school" 
will be an important problem, when the move- 
ment for more general religious training is well 
under way. There will, no doubt, be various 
solutions ; but the first approach to the right one 
must be by way of past experience. The situa- 
tion historically considered must be studied 
apart from any preconceived theory or preju- 
dice. 

Its Development Not Yet Seriously Ana- 
lyzed. The facts concerning the inception and 
development of American Sunday-schools have 
as yet not been investigated, or at least not been 
published. There is, indeed, a mass of litera- 
ture claiming to treat of Sunday-school history ; 
but little of it really assumes as a starting point 
the normal definition of a Sunday-school. It is 
usually confounded with all sorts of agencies 
for religious instruction and made to bear a 
history that is practically coterminous with 
Bible or Church history. Thus Sunday-schools 
are usually made to date from the Garden of 



Introductory. 35 

Eden and include the patriarchs and prophets 
as class-teachers and the whole religious world 
from the beginning as the theater of its action. 
But this is manifestly setting up a theory for 
the institution which transcends and nullifies 
its definition. 

Its Place in Church History. In fact, no- 
where could the origin of an apocrypha in gen- 
eral be better studied than in the publications 
treating of the rise and progress of Sunday- 
school work. But the Sunday-school, as will be 
seen, has made for itself a very definite history 
in the records of certain organized religious 
bodies — the Protestant Episcopal Church, for 
example. The problems relating to its main- 
tenance and development have been attacked 
officially by Church leaders. Its place among 
the various teaching agencies in the Christian 
Church at large has been clearly outlined. It 
has assumed a very definite position in the 
Church's past legislation and at times presented 
most perplexing problems before the Church's 
deliberative bodies. To disregard these facts is 
to misconceive the true character of the institu- 
tion. 

For nearly a century the Sunday-school in 
America has been practically the only means 
operated by the various divisions of Christian- 



36 Introductory. 

ity for the religious instruction of the young. 
There are many reasons why American children 
have been made to depend upon their Sunday- 
school teachers for their general religious knowl- 
edge. But whatever may be the state of this 
knowledge or whatever the educational condi- 
tions, morally and spiritually, connected with 
its acquisition, it must be apparent to all who 
consider the subject that any effort to readjust 
or reform the educational methods that have 
survived in Sunday-school circles must deeply 
affect the organization of the religious bodies. 
The task of instructing Christian youth is not 
one to be lightly regarded. On it depends to a 
large extent the "f aith of the future," the integ- 
rity and purity of the Church's doctrines. 

The right method of approaching the problem 
of improving the educational methods as touch- 
ing religious studies would, therefore, seem to 
be of vital importance to Church life in general. 
And upon a true conception of the peculiar posi- 
tion and the manifold achievements of the Sun- 
day-school in Church history a right solution 
of the problem will to no small degree depend. 



GHAPTEK I. 

THE GENESIS OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 

Definition of Sunday-School. A Sunday- 
school may be denned as an institution for reg- 
ular, general, religious school-work on Sunday 
or the Sabbath-day. As such it is perceptibly 
differentiated : 

(1) from the devotional services (among 
which are included catechetical or children's 
services), class-meetings, religious guilds and 
kindred organizations which have no school- 
work ; 

(2) from the confirmation-class and such 
public means of instructing catechumens or pro- 
bationers for immediate entrance into church- 
membership, which is a special purpose; 

(3) from the day-school whether wholly or 
partly for religious instruction. 1 

^here should be no difficulty in distinguishing 
the Sunday school from the various other means of 
religious instruction, inasmuch as they exist to-day side 
by side with it. Yet in all the so-called Sunday-school 
histories it is confounded with one or more of the other 
educational agencies and made to include their spheres 
of action. Thus, for example, the Yale Lectures (p. 4), 
adopting the above definition with the exception of the 
37 



38 The Sunday-School. 

To understand fully the successive steps in 
the development of the institution it will be nec- 
essary to keep these distinctions clearly in mind. 

Origin Traced to the English Reformation. 

The origin of the Sunday-school may be traced 
directly to the fruits of the English Eeforma- 
tion. 2 The ancient parochial system, before 
then universally in operation, had not only sup- 
plied the religious instruction, but it had pro- 
vided all the education for the young. The 
parish from an educational standpoint was prac- 
tically a school, in which the rector was head- 
master. Besides his ordinary assistants he had 
the help of monasteries and religious societies, 
many of which were in essence teaching bodies. 
The abolition of these and the breaking up of 
the parochial system by Protestantism naturally 
disturbed the very foundations of educational 
work. The English Church reformers in the 

very important last words "on Sunday or the Sabbath 
day," substitutes "on whatever day of the week" and 
thus makes the Sunday-school co-ordinate with the day 
school, in fact with every possible means of teaching 
religious truth by the "group system." Even this lim- 
itation is nowhere strictly regarded, the ordinary re- 
ligious meeting with a talk by the leader being fre- 
quently put into the category of Sunday-schools. 

^Religious Instruction and Its Relation to Educatio-n, 
by President Nicholas Murray Butler in Principles of 
Religious Education, p. 6. 



The Genesis of Sunday-Schools. 39 

endeavor to reorganize the old system, while 
they fortunately did not imitate him in the mat- 
ter of ecclesiastical polity, unfortunately did not 
catch the educational inspiration of Luther, by 
whose burning zeal for popular enlightenment 
the school-master was introduced into every cot- 
tage in Germany and whose schools laid the 
foundations of his country's intellectual great- 



Decay of the Parochial System in England. 

In England the parochial system and its educa- 
tional forces were badly broken between the 
upper mill-stones of successive Anglican and 
Roman conformity and the nether stones of the 
various kinds of non-conformity, each contend- 
ing against the other. This was especially true 
in the large centers of population, where paro- 
chial lines soon became imaginary divisors and 
where the religious contentions added to the 
wide-spread religious indifference and moral 
laxity. Then, too, the immense impetus to 
trades and manufactures and the rapidly devel- 
oping spirit of commercialism, whose fruitage 
in England grew enormously during the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries, made the pre- 
vailing education more practical, to be sure, but 
less general, less thorough, and, most unfortun- 

3 Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. VII., p. 583. 



40 The Sunday-School. 

ately of all, to be regarded as less essential to 
life. The result was that at the close of the 
eighteenth century there were in various Eng- 
lish cities large numbers of children lamentably 
deficient in educational training of any sort. 
Naturally the public gaze was directed at the 
shocking moral degradation of these illiterates 
and steps were taken to remedy what was de- 
clared to be the darkest blot on the social fabric 
of the nation. Thus originated in 1780, under 
the frank of the Church of England, the Sun- 
day-school, which owes its beginning to Raikes, 
the Gloucester editor. So great was the mani- 
fest need of such an institution that in less than 
thirty years it had completed successive pro- 
cesses of evolutionary development and included 
over a quarter of a million of children in its cur- 
ricula. Prime minister and queen recognized its 
national importance as a means of social amelio- 
ration and actively interested themselves in its 
support and spread. Many of the most fashion- 
able in social circles earnestly undertook the 
duties of instructing the children. 4 

Sunday-Schools, Opposed by Puritans, 
Adopted by the Church of England. While the 
Sunday-school arose from the exigencies of the 
English Reformation, it was by no means the 

*Yale Lectures, p. 115. 



The Genesis of Sunday-Schools. 41 

offspring of Protestant non-conformity. On the 
contrary it was bitterly opposed by the Calvan- 
istic puritans. Hence, it at first made little 
progress in Scotland. 5 The Scotch reformers, 
like the continental leaders, had been able in 
their way to keep fairly intact the old parish 
system, though episcopacy was eliminated, and 
had succeeded in maintaining somewhat more 
effective means of education than their southern 
neighbors. The Sunday-schools introduced what 
appeared to the stricter Puritans to be sacrilege. 
As is well known, they were originally designed 
to be means of general education and not simply 
of religious instruction, which has only quite 
recently been divorced from secular training. 
The idea of ordinary general school-work on the 
Sabbath seemed to the Puritan to promote a 
breach of the Fourth Commandment. Again, 
the employment of lay-teachers appeared to 
threaten the integrity of the ministerial calling. 
The Puritan ideals of the ministry at that time 
were very high. The Church of England, in the 
middle of the eighteenth century, however, 
under the stress of internal reactionary move- 
ments, deemed it expedient to sink the respect 
for ecclesiastical prerogative and the strict 

5 Fourth Report of the Philadelphia Sunday and 
Adult Society, p. 7. The same was true of some of the 
more liberal non-conforming sects. 



42 The Sunday-School. 

observance of the sacred traditions in the prac- 
tical needs of the hour. Hence at the very 
outset the progress of the Sunday-school was 
great in the Church, in whose bosom it had orig- 
inated. Aided by the labors of Andrew Bell and 
his imitator, Joseph Lancaster, both of whom 
aroused widespread interest in popular educa- 
tion through the success of their methods of 
instructions by monitorial teachers, it rapidly 
developed from Raikes' district-school plan to 
the institution for religious instruction only, as 
we now have it. 

State of Religious Instruction in the Amer- 
ican Colonies. In America the conditions were 
similar to those prevalent in England. Before 
the Revolution the rising generations were grad- 
ually lapsing into ignorance and irreligion. In 
the larger centers of population the immorality 
of the young was long a theme of reproach. The 
traditional means of religious training were the 
day-school with its Saturday session, the cate- 
chetical service (ordinarily on Sunday after- 
noons), and home-instruction, which usually 
centered in a household religious gathering on 
Sunday nights. The day-school was meagerly 
effective in the colonies except in certain parts 
of New England and New York state. 6 School- 

c The Saturday session of the day-school was a very 
important part of its routine, especially during the 



The Genesis of Sunday-Schools. 43 

education was hardly in fashion even among the 
gentry, many of whom could neither read nor 
write ; and its extent was limited. Very few of 
the children of the poor had learned their let- 
ters; hence there was little knowledge of relig- 
ious literature of any sort. The catechetical 
service at its best reached only as far as parish 
influences went. When parish lines became 
eliminated, its general efficiency was greatly 
reduced, and many children slipped away from 
the care of the parochial authorities, thus losing 
the educational benefits of the parish. Then, 
too, the catechetical service presupposes day- 
school or other instruction. At best it is but a 
review in open church of what has been learned 
outside. When this has been deficient, its work 
necessarily declines. Furthermore, the dearth 

seventeenth century. This session was devoted entirely 
to religious instruction and spiritual examination. "The 
teacher shall instruct children in the Common Prayer 
and in Catechism on Wednesday and Saturday to enable 
them to say them better at the catechetical service on 
Sunday." (History of Education in Delaware, by the 
Rev. L. P. Powell.) See also Good Order Established 
in Pennsylvania and ~New Jersey, by Thomas Budd 
(1685), in which it is stated that the ordinary custom 
among the Quakers and other religious bodies of these 
states was to have the ordinary school session on Satur- 
day morning and a meeting of the children on Saturday 
afternoon for "good instruction and admonition by mas- 
ters to scholars," and also strict examination of the 
conversation of the scholars of the past week. 



44 The Sunday-School. 

of the clergy, the indifference and inaptitude for 
this work of those in the field, and the growing 
indifference of the laity to educational advan- 
tages in general, had practically nullified the 
effect of this service. Before the eighteenth cen- 
tury it had 'practically teen abandoned ; few 
children attended. 7 Those who did were often 
guilty of irreverent, disorderly behavior, which 
not even the physical force of the sexton or 
verger could restrain. And, finally, family 
religion had for years before the Revolution 
been in a state of decay. The injunction to the 
parents and sponsors of the young, which the 
Church had thought best to write in her earliest 
reformed liturgy — namely, that "they should 
provide for the learning of the Creed, the Lord's 
Prayer and the Ten Commandments and all 
other things which a Christian ought to know 
and believe," — was widely neglected. 

Revival Efforts During the 18th Century. 

During the eighteenth century the various relig- 
ious bodies endeavored to remedy these glaring- 
defects in the social life of the colonies by 
revivals of religious endeavor. The Church, in 
addition to her various parish-schools, which at 
the best were lamentably inadequate, introduced 
supplementary institutions like the Protestant 

''Yale Lectures, p. 216. 



The Genesis of Sunday-Schools. 45 

Episcopal Charity School in ISTew York City, 
founded in 1709, and in the crowded quarters 
of large cities helped to relieve the stress of 
illiteracy. Later on Wesley 8 and Whitefield in 
the South saw the need of attacking the ten- 
dency to irreligion on the part of the young and 
were eminently successful in teaching these. 
Towards the middle of the century the Mora- 
vians and other German mystics settled in Penn- 
sylvania, and brought over with them the tradi- 
tions of the Fatherland, in which the educa- 
tional ardor infused by Luther and Melancthon 
had not grown cold. Their community schools 
were important factors in the dissemination of 
religious knowledge, while the education of the 
children was one of the principal features of 
their religious activity. Count Zinzendorf, the 
noble Moravian missionary, who landed in 1741, 
gathered crowds of neglected children from the 
streets of Philadelphia into the First Moravian 
Church and zealously addressed and catechized 
them on Sunday afternoons. The educational 
8 Wesley on his way to America at the beginning 
of his missionary career was thrown much into the 
company of the German Moravians, at whose clergy 
house he boarded for some days on his arrival in Georgia. 
The German ideal of missionary work in the Father- 
land was the teaching of poor children by the newly or- 
dained recipients of the gift of the Holy Spirit, some 
very pathetic facts regarding which are given in Wes- 
ley's Journal (q. v.). 



46 The Sunday-School. 

activity of these simple-minded, deeply religious 
Germans shed much light into the darkness of 
their environment in that benighted era. 

The "Great Awakening" under Jonathon 
Edwards. The Methodists. Another import- 
ant movement in the middle of the eighteenth 
century was begun in New England under the 
soul-stirring preaching and "merciless logic" 
of Jonathon Edwards. This was the "Great 
Awakening/ 7 and its influences were largely edu- 
cational. The example of the Scotch and con- 
tinental Reformers had early introduced the 
Bible by the hand of the school-master into 
almost every family of Puritan New England. 
But this example had been forgotten in the 
growing indifference of the times. It was now 
revived and the work of instructing the children 
was again developed with intense zeal by means 
of town or parish schools, the Sunday ministra- 
tions of the clergy and (to a certain extent) of 
household worship. Then, too, just before the 
outbreak of the War of Independence, the 
Methodists under Asbury and Pilmore moved 
various communities, especially in the Southern 
States, to greater interest and activity in the 
education of the rising generation and intro- 
duced the novel "class-meeting" to facilitate 
religious instruction. 



The Genesis of Sunday-Schools. 47 

Nothing Like Sunday-Schools in Evidence 
Before the Revolution. But it must be remem- 
bered that in all these efforts to revive learning 
in its various forms, and especially religious 
learning, nothing like the Sunday-school had as 
yet made its appearance. In many of the char- 
ity-schools of the Church and other Christian 
bodies, services were held on Sundays for chil- 
dren whose parents had no seats in the churches 
and did not attend service. Some of the Ger- 
man community-schools like that at Ephrata, 
Pennsylvania, had extra sessions on the weekly 
holiday, especially during Lent, for those whose 
daily work prevented their attendance at the 
ordinary sessions. But these had none of the 
characteristics of the Sunday-schools. 9 . The 
Moravian gatherings were in no wise different 
to the catechetical services, commonly held for 
centuries by all religious bodies ; and in the same 
category must be placed also the work of Wes- 
ley 10 and the other Methodists, though the novel 

9 The Ephrata school, which, by the way, was a Sat- 
urday school, has been generally regarded by writers 
on Sunday-school history as the first authenticated Sun- 
day-school in America. But Dr. Edwin W. Rice, editor 
of the Sunday School World, effectually controverts the 
general tradition in that periodical for February, 187G. 

10 Much has been written regarding the reputed Sun- 
day-school in Christ Church parish, Savannah, Ga., 
said to have been begun by John Wesley in 1737. The 



48 The Sunday-School. 

features developed by Asbury and others of later 
date were a step out of traditional lines. The 
"Great Awakening" gave the clergy of New 
England many more candidates for church- 
membership than usual, and some like Dr. 
Joseph Bellamy, who labored in Connecticut 
about 1740, had many of these to exhort on 
Sundays ; but their efforts moved in channels in 
no wise divergent from the traditional means 
of religious instruction. 11 To trace the origin 
of Sunday-schools to these is but to mistake the 
nature and scope of such efforts and to transcend 
the function of the Sunday-school. 

present school in that parish each year celebrates its 
anniversary, tracing it back to that date. But nothing 
is better authenticated than that the institution which 
has given rise to this chronology was the ordinary parish 
day school taught by one De La Motte. (See Wesley's 
Journal.) The Arminian Magazine for January, 1785, 
narrates Wesley's first contact with the Sunday-school 
and quotes him as saying: "Who knows but some of 
these schools may become nurseries for Christians;" as 
if this were his first experimental knowledge of the in- 
stitution. 

"Various other so-called Sunday-schools, said to 
have been begun before the eighteenth century, like that 
at Plymouth, Mass. (1669), at Koxbury, Mass. (1679), 
and others, have been identified with the day-school, 
which had no Sundav work. 



CHAPTER II. 

EARLY BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA. 

Parochial System Further Demolished by 
the Revolutionary War. The Revolutionary War 
dealt a heavy blow at the remnants of the paro- 
chial system in the thirteen colonies and undid 
much of what had been accomplished in the 
religious revivals of the eighteenth century. 
Previously, much of the religious work had been 
of a missionary character, having been directed 
from the mother-country. Under the conditions 
of readjustment, all Christian bodies except, 
perhaps, the Puritans practically had to start 
anew to evangelize the great niunbers of the 
"unchurched" in the infant republic. The crip- 
pling by the war of the parish agencies, inade- 
quate before, swelled these numbers. 

Skepticism and Deism Rife. Other causes 
operated to enhance the irreligion of the times. 
Especially paralyzing was the scientific infidel- 
49 



50 The Sunday-School. 

ity widely prevalent among the few who had 
the advantages of a liberal education. On every 
hand were seen the baneful evidences of the 
influence of a frothy, flippant French skepti- 
cism and of a more stolid, cold-blooded Anglo- 
Saxon deism. An ominous feature of this skep- 
ticism was the profession on the part of its 
votaries of a form of Biblical criticism, that 
seemed to point to a consummate, though per- 
verted, knowledge of the Scriptures, such as was 
not professed even by many of the most learned 
defenders of the faith. As a result, many of 
the well-educated were quoting Scripture to deny 
the fundamentals of Christianity. Few young 
men at the colleges professed the Christian faith 
or even tacitly acknowledged church-member- 
ship. And many of the public men were 
declared to be of no religion whatever. 

Degeneracy of the Young. At the close of 
the War of Independence, therefore, organized 
Christianity was faced with a serious problem. 
The worst phase of it was the decay of the moral 
fiber in Christians. Bishop White, first bishop 
of Pennsylvania, the patriarch of the early 
Church in the United States of America, in his 
writings on Sunday-schools, speaks of the 
"streams of corruption that polluted our religion 



Early Beginnings in America. 51 

at its very depths. 1 " The noxious effects of this 
moral laxity showed most banefully in the devel- 
opment of the young. The religious and moral 
degeneracy of the children was appalling. On 
Sundays the prayers of the clergy and the praise 
of the not numerous worshippers in the churches 
of the larger cities were often drowned by the 
riotous and blasphemous clamor of the younger 
element outside. 

Bishop White Attacks the Problem. It was 

this latter phase of the problem that troubled 
our Church leaders most. Events showed that 
Bishop White had realized its tremendous diffi- 
culties and had meditated on plans for its solu- 
tion before his consecration to the episcopate by 
English bishops in 1789. The friable soil of 
youth, even though overgrown 1 with noxious 
weeds, presented to him a more hopeful point 
of attack than that of age sterilized by indiffer- 
ence. He had before him the shrewd example 
of the Jesuits in the reconstruction period of 
their church during the sixteenth century after 
the Lutheran outburst. These had stayed the 
Reformation in certain sections by their earnest 
and effective work in teaching and training the 
children. 

Address to the Pennsylvania Diocesan Convention 
of 1818. 



52 The Sunday-School. 

The Church Most Affected by the Prevailing 
Difficulties. Events showed also that the 
Church was in such a state of disorganization 
as to he least fitted of all the Christian bodies to 
cope with the problem wider existing methods. 
The Methodists sent home all but one of the 
English ministers commissioned by Wesley. 
Asbury remained to organize them into an inde- 
pendent body, which quickly adapted itself to 
existing conditions in the state and made rapid 
progress with the old methods of church work, 
adding as we have noted the "class-meeting," 
which, as its name indicates, is a variation of 
a form of service rather than a scholastic 
agency. The Presbyterians, Moravians and 
other reformed bodies started anew with zeal to 
repair the ravages of the war within their organ- 
izations and to confront the long-standing in- 
difference and skepticism without, but still 
maintained the old methods. 

State of the Church After the Revolution. 

The Protestant Episcopal Church in her dis- 
rupted, chaotic state, caused by the break with 
the mother-church, felt the stress of the times 
most heavily. At first it seemed by no means cer- 
tain that the fragments, scattered by the break, 
would cohere into an organization fit to be styled 
a church. Bereft of many of her clergy, who had 



Early Beginnings in America. 53 

been banished from the country for their Tory- 
ism ; weakened by the loss of much of her health- 
iest blood in the final separation from her bosom 
of the Methodists ; her laity discouraged and 
disaffected ; the spirit of her clergy well nigh 
broken ; her leaders greatly handicapped by the 
popular aversion to her on the part of strenuous 
loyalists ; suspected of nameless crimes against 
the social, political and religious standards of 
the republic, the outlook for her welfare was 
certainly dark and the problem foreboding. 
Bishop White, however, never wavered in his 
hope for the future. Undismayed by halting 
conventions and pessimistic delegates, he at once 
actively set out not only to strengthen her stakes, 
but also to lengthen her cords. 

Helplessness of Existing Parish Agencies. 

In directing his attention first at the children, 
the conviction early dawned on him, that the 
old methods of work alone were useless for 
the attack. In the chaotic condition of paro- 
chial affairs, no immediate results could be 
sought from parish-schools. Furthermore, 
religion being divorced from the state by con- 
stitution, the Church could not hope to imme- 
diately impress her individuality upon the day- 
schools anywhere in the country. Then, owing 
to the great dearth of the clergy, the range of 



54 The Sunday-School. 

parochial influence had become exceedingly con- 
tracted ; hence the ordinary parish agencies 
(and especially the catechetical service) were 
lamentably helpless. Even had they been 
strong, they could not have adequately reached 
the crowds of people, young and old, at that 
time untouched by any religious influences and 
unable to read, even. 

Bishop White and the First Day Society. 

During his stay abroad for episcopal consecra- 
tion Bishop White had seen and been impressed 
with the work of Raikes' Sunday-schools, which 
then were just beginning to show the fruits of 
their usefulness and to attract wide public 
notice. In 1788, shortly after his return to 
Philadelphia, where he was rector of the United 
Parishes (Christ Church, St. Peter's and St. 
James'), he proposed a plan to the vestry of 
Christ Church for the organization of Sunday- 
schools according to the Raikes' pattern. 2 The 
vestry adopted the plan, but deferred its prac- 
tical execution until funds and better organiza- 
tion should be at hand. Besides this it was at 
that time deemed venturesome to attempt to 
introduce for popular use an innovation of so 
characteristically English an origin. 

2 Records of Christ Church. See also The Church 
in America, p. 309. 



Early Beginnings in America. 55 

Bishop White then detailed the scheme to the 
congregation and presented it in the light of 
moral improvement rather than of spiritual 
regeneration. In this way it attracted several 
rich men who were not confirmed churchmen. 
Christ Church at that time was the gathering- 
place of many such. Some of them were not 
even credited Avith being Christians, but came 
to service pretty regularly, because they favored 
all elements in the body-politic that aimed at 
social amelioration. The plan deeply interested 
Benjamin Rush, among others. These men 
drew in others without the parish sphere of 
influence — notably Quakers — and in 1790 
formed the First Day Society. Bishop White 
was chosen its president and a number of First 
Day or Sunday-schools were at once started in 
various parts of Philadelphia and its liberties 
or environs. 

First Day Schools. While these schools 
were not exactly an appendage to the Church 
under her direct control, they represented her 
mind and testified to her leadership. They 
were embryonic in their character — only the 
beginning in the evolution of Sunday-schools. 
They were the pioneer efforts in the campaign, 
whose battles the Church was not yet ready to 
fight, and whose fruits many Christians of the 



56 The Sunday-School. 

nation were not as yet persuaded would be 
wholesome to Christianity. Pennsylvania, un- 
like Xew York and some few other states of 
the Union, had as yet no free schools, sup- 
ported by public funds. In fact, one of the 
first eiforts of the First Day Society was to 
memorialize the state legislature and to petition 
for the introduction of a system of public 
schools. 3 The First Day Schools, therefore, 
occupy about the same place in the evolution 
of the latter as in the evolution of the Sunday- 
schools. They were taught in the main by paid 
teachers, 4 usually the schoolmasters of the neigh- 
boring day-schools, who, in many cases, were 
Englishmen of recent immigration and belonged 
to the Church of England. The sessions were 
from eight to half past ten before morning ser- 
vice, and from half past four to six after even- 
ing worship. A visiting committee of the society 
was expected to be present at each session to 
see that teachers and scholars performed their 
duties properly. The lessons were on the usual 
elementary secular themes taught in the day- 
school, only the Bible was used as the Reader 
for the older scholars, and thus formed the basis 

3 Minutes of the First Day Society, December 29th, 
1791. 

4 Volunteer teachers served in several of the First 
Day Schools almost from their start. 



Early Beginnings in America. 57 

of the spelling, writing and other studies. 5 The 
real religious part of the work, therefore, was 
not so very large ; nor were the schoolmasters 
always good trainers in morality. To pro- 
mote religion the scholars were often marched, 
sometimes in a body and sometimes by single 
schools, to "the places of worship called Christ 
Church, St. Peter's" or some other nearby 
church. It was a source of satisfaction that 
usually the scholars "behaved decently through 
the streets and separated as w 7 ell as could be 
expected." To promote morality as well as 
religion books were loaned to the scholars 
for their own and their parents' perusal. 7 . The 
titles of some of these were : "Whole Duty of 
Woman," "'Economy of Human Life," "Beau- 
ties of Creation," "Power of Religion," 
"Doaley's Fables." Catechisms were fre- 
quently distributed for study, but they were 
copies of "A Catechism of Mature." 

Opposition of the Puritans. While the suc- 
cessful development of the First Day Schools 
attracted the attention of all the people of Phil- 
adelphia, it aroused the opposition of some. 
Among these were members of Christian organ- 
oid., July 9tn, 1791. 
"Ibid., July 6th, 1794. 
7 Ibid., August 10th, 1792. 



58 The Sunday-School. 

izations, notably the Presbyterians. 8 like their 
brethren of Scotland they objected to school- 
work on the Sabbath and to the secularization of 
the "ministerial work of religious instruction." 
Then, too, they looked askance, perhaps, at the 
Church's influence in the new T schools. Some 
of the most prominent and wealthy privately 
started day-schools and night-schools for the 
poor. In the localities, where these nourished, 
the First Day Schools soon declined and went 
out of existence. In 1804 the Philadelphia 
Union was organized by a number of Pres- 
byterians to give free instruction to poor chil- 
dren on week-day nights, supplementing this 
work by special invitations and active influence 
in getting the children to attend Sunday services 
at the Presbyterian churches. 

The Philadelphia Evangelical Society. In 

1808 members of various Presbyterian congre- 
gations of Philadelphia formed an important 
organization called the Evangelical Society, 
which in a few years surpassed the First Day 
Society in the number and activity of its work- 
ers and in the number of the children reached. 9 
It w r as a sort of home-mission corporation, under 

8 The adherents to the new light, that is, the more 
liberal among the Presbyterians, did not oppose, but 
warmly favored Sunday-schools. 

"Minutes of the Evangelical Society. 



Early Beginnings in America. 59 

whose auspices mission services were inaugu- 
rated and week-day schools begun in the poorest 
sections of Philadelphia and its liberties. The 
services were usually held on Sunday evenings 
in the school-houses, some of which the society 
built, and were the ordinary religious services 
of the denomination. They were, as a rule, 
entirely devotional; it was expected that a reg- 
ularly ordained minister should preside, and 
all that savored of school-work was purposely 
eliminated. To match the manifest advantages 
of the First Day Schools, however, sessions were 
held on Thursday nights, in which lessons were 
heard and general secular instruction given by 
the group or monitorial system — similar to that 
which obtains in the present day Sunday-school. 

Robert May. Robert May, to whom is ac- 
corded a somewhat mythical place by most 
Sunday-school historians, was for a short time 
very active in the Evangelical Society. He has 
often been styled the "father of the modern 
Sunday-school movement in America." In real- 
ity, he was a Welsh schoolmaster in the North- 
ern Liberties of Philadelphia, who taught at one 
of the school-houses of this society, opened in 
1811. 10 At the outbreak of the war of 1812, 
like many other British subjects, he returned to 

10 Ibid. 



60 The Sunday-School. 

the dominions of the mother country. During 
his connection with the work, lasting about a 
year, he became known for the inauguration of a 
union-gathering (called a lecture) for all the 
children under the influence of the Evangelical 
Society on Saturday afternoons. His earnest 
denunciation of the prevalent practice of induc- 
ing poor children to come to the services and 
schools by means of pennies, cakes and other 
attractive, but fleshly gifts helped to popularize 
the system of awards of different colored tickets 
for perfect attendance and exemplary conduct. 11 

Individual Efforts of Sectarian Leaders. En- 
livened by the sunshine of a larger liberty 
inspired by the principles of the young republic, 
sundry other efforts were actively made on the 
part of individuals in various Protestant sects 
to interest the people in their peculiar tenets. 
These usually began with a gathering of chil- 
dren, who were more easily attracted than the 
adults, and whose parents were reached more 
through the children's than their own immediate 
interest in the doctrines expounded. ~Not infre- 
quently a shoemaker or some other artisan would 
attract such a gathering to his shop. 12 Being 
simply devotional in character, it would hardly 

u Ibid. See Additional Notes, p. 292. 

12 The Unive?"salist Origin of Sunday Schools. 



Early Beginnings in America. 61 

seem necessary to mention such meetings here 
but for the fact that they have been regarded as 
important factors in the early development of 
Sunday-schools by more modern exponents of 
their creeds. As a matter of fact, they bear no 
relation whatever to Sunday-school beginnings, 
unless, indeed, the institution in its definition 
can be made synonymous with religious instruc- 
tion in general, including religious meetings of 
all descriptions. 

Tribulations of Early Sunday-School Pro- 
moters. It must be remembered that gather- 
ings of children, like those inaugurated by the 
Evangelical Society in Philadelphia, form a 
type advocated especially by religious people 
antagonistic to the distinguishing features of the 
Sunday-school. The opposition to the latter as 
a "Tory innovation" inculcating a sacrilegious 
breach of the Fourth Commandment and irrev- 
erently threatening the integrity of the minis- 
terial calling by the employment of lay-teachers, 
was more evident and forceful outside of Phila- 
delphia — in places where the Quaker influence 
for tolerance and peace was not so strong. Insti- 
tutions similar to the First Day Schools were 
begun in various parts of the United States soon 
after 1700. In almost every instance the 
attempts were antagonized either by violence, 



62 The Sunday-School. 

which, was not infrequently administered, or 
else by strenuous efforts to counteract their 
influence through the establishment of other and 
more traditional types of religious gatherings. 
In 1803 several Episcopalians started a Sunday- 
school at Hudson, Xew York, but were forced 
to desist from their undertaking by the Puritan 
opposition there. 13 As late as 1815 the Rev. 
Gregory T. Bedell, rector of the parish in that 
strenuous old town, was forced to give up a sec- 
ond attempt for similar reasons. 14 Mr. and Mrs. 
Divie Bethune, two devoted Christian workers 
in the Reformed Dutch circles of New York 
City, actuated and aided by the latter' s mother, 
Mrs. Isabella Graham, underwent pathetic 
experiences in the endeavor to begin Sunday- 
school work at the metropolis in 1803. They 
persisted, however, and in the course of ten or 
twelve years maintained several schools. A few 
individuals of the Unitarian persuasion, in 
181 15 inaugurated the First Day School move- 
ment at Boston, Mass. It was again antagon- 
ized by the Puritans in a vigorous campaign, in 
which the work of the Philadelphia Evangelical 

"Second Annual Report of the General P. E. S. S. 
Union, p. 55. 

"Memoirs of the Rev. G. T. Bedell, p. 237. 

15 A Brief History of the Massachusetts Sabbath 
School Society, p. 3. See also Pray's History of Sunday 
Schools. 



Early Beginnings in America. 63 

Society was presented as a model and success- 
fully imitated. 10 Similar results developed at 
Pittsburgh, Pa., Providence, E. L, and sundry 
other manufacturing centers about the same 
time. Elsewhere in New England the promoters 
of early Sunday-schools met with more pro- 
nounced resistance, especially in the smaller 
towns. The new institution there was gener- 
ally stigmatized as a "Tory invention of the 
devil." Its scholars were black-listed as "imps 
of Satan," and its teachers persecuted and 
jeered at as "minions of hell." 17 

Sunday-Schools up to 1814 Not Connected 
With Church Organizations. It is to be noted, 
that up to the close of the War of 1812 on 
account of the 'popular opposition and also on 
account of their own structural ivedkness and 
disorganization, none of the religious bodies of 
America in their corporate capacity had as yet 
taken up the Sunday-school. What successful 
work was instituted had been the fruit of priv- 
ate individual enterprise and of the order 
known as "undenominational." Meanwhile, 
however, the wonderful development of the 
Raikes' schools in the Church and the more lib- 
eral non-conforming bodies of England and 

lc Evangelical Intelligencer for 1808, p. 581. 

"Yale Lectures, p. 128. See Additional Notes, p. 292. 



64 The Sunday-School. 

Wales was impressing upon the "irreconcilables" 
the deepening consciousness of their manifold 
benefits in the spread of the Gospel and was thus 
moderating the antagonism. The unpopularity 
of the War of 1812, especially in New England, 
whose trade and budding manufacturing indus- 
tries it paralyzed, did much to quench "Tory- 
baiting" in general and to set the tide running 
in the other direction. The termination of the 
war, therefore, as might be expected, saw the 
various religious organizations of America 
ready and eager to parallel and improve upon 
what had been so successfully accomplished in 
Great Britain in the way of popular religious 
training. 

The First Church Sunday-School. Natural- 

ly, the Church led the way. In the fall of 
IS 14, Jackson Kemper and James Milnor, 
Bishop White's assistant clergy at Christ 
Church, began an afternoon Sunday-school and 
a night service at Commissioners' Hall in the 
Northern Liberties of Philadelphia, which re- 
sulted in the formation of the parish of St. 
John's, 1ST. L. This was the first school officially 
incorporated by any religious organization in 
America and preluded the general adoption dur- 
ing the next three years of the institution in its 
developed form by most of the church organiza- 



Early Beginnings in America. 65 

tions in the country. Asa Eaton began a Sun- 
day-school at Christ Church, Boston, in the 
Summer of 1815, which was the first of the 
existing schools in New England. The organ- 
izations, like the Evangelical Society of Phila- 
delphia, expired with the lament, that the chil- 
dren under their care had gone over to the 
Sunday-schools. 18 The First Day Society also 
ceased active operations soon after the opening 
of the first Church school, though its organiza- 
tion still continues, chiefly for the purpose of 
distributing the income on its invested funds 
among various Sunday-schools, too poor to sup- 
port themselves. In breaking away from the 
parent society, many of the First Day Schools 
maintained their work intact, attaching them- 
selves as the nuclei of Sunday-schools to what- 
ever churches the teachers happened to belong. 

Local Unions Under Private Auspices. In 

addition to the efforts of the various religious 
organizations, at first a large number of private 
individuals formed themselves into local unions, 
operating Sunday-schools in places which the 
churches could not reach. This was especially 
the case in Pennsylvania, in which state there 
was scarcely a school-house during 1815 or 1816, 
that was not used on Sundays for the instruc- 

"Minute's of the Evangelical Society. 



66 The Sunday-School. 

tion of poor children in the word of God. Some 
of these unions operated a dozen or more schools. 
A notable instance was the Princeton Union in 
New Jersey, in whose inception the future 
bishop of Ohio, Charles P. Mcllvaine, then 
(1815) a Princeton undergraduate, played a 
most prominent part. 19 With Mcllvaine was 
actively associated John Johns, afterward bishop 
of Virginia. The enthusiasm of these two 
young Churchmen was a not unimportant factor 
in the early development of the Sunday-school 
in America. 

Development of Sunday-Schools in New 
York. The general movement toward the 
establishment of Sunday-schools in New York 
began somewhat later than in Pennsylvania or 
New England, mainly because educators there 
doubted if "amongst a comparatively thin popu- 
lation, enjoying so abundantly and munificently 
the benefit of free, common and parochial char- 
ity-school education, the Sunday-school system 
could be productive of any substantial benefit 
for want of proper subjects for instruction." 20 
The charity day-schools of the churches, prior 
to the Revolution, had supplemented the more 
than ordinarily efficient common-school system 

"Life of Charles Pettit Mcllvaine, p. 11. 
20 Christian Journal, September, 1819, p. 263. 



Early Beginnings in America. 67 

in New York state to a degree satisfactory to the 
people of the times. But since the war educa- 
tional standards under the impulse of the relig- 
ious revival had rapidly advanced and educa- 
tional ideals had broadened. With the convic- 
tion, that every soul was allied to the Saviour 
and, therefore, a subject of concern and respon- 
sibility to those who now felt themselves 
inspired to train men for salvation, came a 
decided step toward universality of education, 
where before the range in both subject-matter 
and in "proper subjects for instruction" was 
somewhat contracted. Hence educators soon 
found more children worthy of educational bene- 
fits. When, therefore, in January, 1816, the 
Sunday-school movement at New York really 
commenced, the "success of that experiment in 
point of numbers, as well as otherwise, far 
exceeded the hopes and calculations of the most 
sanguine and entirely revolutionized and set- 
tled the opinions of the heretofore incredulous 
and skeptical" doubters. This movement, more- 
over, had the advantage of a careful study of the 
work of the Philadelphia churches and local 
unions and was from the start more concerted 
and better organized than elsewhere. The 
Female Union Society for the Promotion of 
Sunday -Schools was first formed in that year 
and began at once in many sections of the 



68 The Sunday-School. 

metropolis the organization of schools for girls, 
most of which were under the immediate con- 
trol of special societies in the various religious 
bodies, though a few were operated by local 
unions acting independently of any ecclesiasti- 
cal government. Impelled by the expressly 
declared consciousness, that "New York had been 
very derelict in this work, this society rapidly 
and successfully extended its activity. 21 It 
included, however, but three schools of the 
Church : St. George's, Christ Church and a mis- 
sion on First Street, Soon after the incorpora- 
tion of the female society the New Yorh Union 
was organized by men to start Sunday-schools 
for boys, and this, too, grew rapidly, including 
practically the same churches as the former. In 
the development of both these societies the Rev. 
James Milnor, who as Bishop White's assistant 
had helped begin the first Sunday-school in Phil- 
adelphia, and who had been called to St. 
George's, took an exceedingly active part. 

Bishop White and the First General Sunday- 
School Society. The first attempt in America 
at something broader than a local union was 
consummated in the organization of the Phila- 
delphia Sunday and Adult Society. In the 

21 Report of the New York Female Union Society 
for 1816. Also Christian Herald, April 27th, 1818. 



Early Beginnings in America. 69 

institution of the Sunday-school movement after 
the War of 1812, as well as in its earlier evolu- 
tion after 1790, the Church in Philadelphia had 
the prestige of Bishop White's astute leadership, 
which was respected at home and abroad by men 
of all sorts and conditions. His judicious rec- 
torate over the United Parishes of Philadelphia, 
both during and after the first Revolutionary 
War, softened the force of the reaction against 
"all things Anglican" and clothed the Church 
in his immediate sphere of influence with a 
vitality that was not evident in other sections of 
the country. 

The Philadelphia Sunday and Adult Society 
Under the Leadership of Churchmen. The 

first steps in the formation of the Sunday and 
Adult Society were taken at St. Paul's Church 
by the officers of the newly established Sunday- 
schools of that old parish in February, 181 6. 22 
John P. Bankson was the leading spirit. The 
enterprise was not officially launched until 
April, 1817, however, when the general society 
was regularly formed under the presidency of 
Samuel J. Robbins, a prominent churchman of 
St. Paul's parish. 23 Bankson was its secretary. 

"Minutes of St. Paul's Church Sunday School So- 
ciety. 

"Minutes of the Sunday and Adult Society. Mr. 
Robbins was also President of the Old St. John's S. S. 
Society of the Northern Liberties, Philadelphia. 



70 The Sunday-School. 

Incorporated by charter in 1819, it was primar- 
ily designed to be a state-society , but it soon out- 
grew the original intentions of its projectors and 
took in Sunday-school societies and local unions 
in many other states besides Pennsylvania. At 
the time of its incorporation, after a little more 
than two years' progress, it consisted of 227 
unions or societies, 2,653 teachers and nearly 
20,000 scholars, representing eleven states and 
one territory. Many Church societies were 
among these, and, although for reasons to be 
mentioned hereafter its leadership passed to 
other hands, many Churchmen of influence 
remained on its Board of Managers. 

The Sunday and Adult Society Merges Into 
the American Sunday-School Union. The Sun- 
day and Adult Society, while it comprehended 
several unions in !New York state, did not 
include the two societies of Xew York City nor 
those of other large cities in the East. In a few 
years, however, their fields of work overlapped 
and the need was felt for a more general organ- 
ization than any yet in existence. In 1824 
steps were taken that led to the formation of 
the American Sunday-School Union, which is 
the great center of general work for the promo- 
tion of Sunday-school activity in the United 
States and Canada. The paramount influence 



Early Beginnings in America. 71 

of the Sunday and Adult Society among the 
societies merged into the Union was recognized 
in the establishment of the latter's headquarters 
at Philadelphia. 

Though the Church had now concentrated 
her interests in other directions, churchmen 
were still prominent in the progress of the inter- 
denominational work. The American Sunday- 
School Union has been a great missionary 
agency as well as a strong center of supply and 
aid to established schools. It employed a num- 
ber of agents, who started many new schools, 
where the churches could not begin them, and 
thus speedily and widely extended the field of 
Sunday-school work. Though the Union was 
designed to include all bodies of Christians, it 
did not at first gain the co-operation of some. 
The Methodists, as a class, bitterly opposed its 
progress on the ground that it was a propagating 
agency of Hopkinsianism or Calvinistic Pres- 
byterianism to the detriment of other creeds. 
So powerful was the political influence of the 
Methodists that no charter could be procured 
for the Union from the commonwealth until 
1845, or after a lapse of twenty years of hard 
work. 

Evolution of Sunday-Schools Worked Out in 
England. Before leaving the subject of Sun- 



72 The Sunday-School. 

day-school development in general to consider 
the growth of Sunday-schools within the 
Church, it may be well to bear in mind that to 
a certain extent the evolution of the institution 
was practically worked out in England. Amer- 
ica contributed little or nothing to the early 
process of development. The First Day Schools 
of 1814 showed no advance on those of 1790 in 
point of practical operation. But in England 
the paid schoolmaster, who had applied the day- 
school system to the Sunday-school, had been 
superseded by volunteers and the character of 
the institution had changed. By the time the 
various religious bodies in America had taken 
up the institution, it had become in England 
much more than a means of charitable education 
chiefly for the children of nonrchurchgoers. 
Spelling, writing and reading were still taught 
from secular primers, spelling and copy-books; 
but the religious groundwork had become much 
more settled and a deeper spiritual tone had 
asserted itself in the purpose of the promoters. 
At first, the religious motive behind the instruc- 
tion was lost in the secular routine, carried on 
by persons frequently of no religious convictions 
whatever. But with the advent of volunteer 
teachers, most of whom were devout members 
of the Church and of the best families in the 



Early Beginnings in America. 73 

United Kingdom, increasing emphasis was laid 
on sacred learning and devotional teaching. 

Advance From Secular to Religious Instruc- 
tion. As the children learned their letters, sec- 
ular instruction was more and more differen- 
tiated from the Sunday work. Important pro- 
gress was made in this direction by the multi- 
plication of free week-day schools, many of 
which were at once begun by Church authorities, 
who were aroused to action by Andrew Bell's 
vigorous agitation for such schools. Non-con- 
formists, also, enthusiastically engaged in the 
establishment of these institutions, impelled by 
the successful teaching of Joseph Lancaster. In 
this way religious instruction soon became the 
sole motive of Sunday-schools. 

. Opposition Disappears. It was the fact of 
this development that disarmed much of the 
opposition to the latter. Some churchmen of the 
class, commonly known as "high-church," as 
well as the Puritans had antagonized Kaikes' 
innovation. Their reverence for the Church's 
ancient traditions made them fear that the 
sanctity of these traditions might be invaded in 
the promotion of the new institution. When the 
secular aspect of the Sunday work began to 
wear off and the accredited god-fathers and god- 



74 The Sunday-School. 

mothers of the Church's children began in earn- 
est to pursue the duties of teaching anciently 
committed to them, it seemed like a revival of 
the primitive practice. Then it was that the 
Sunday-school was everywhere adopted with 
avidity. 

This was the condition of affairs at the close 
of the War of 1812. The harriers against Brit- 
ish influence having been broken away, the 
Sunday-school was rapidly introduced in all 
sections of the United States ; and it was in 
substance the institution as developed in the 
mother-country. The stream of immigration, 
that set in. from the old to the new country soon 
after the war, naturally stimulated its wonder- 
ful growth all over the Republic. 

Constitution and Routine of Early Sunday- 
Schools. The rules and regulations of the 
Philadelphia Sunday and Adult Society in 1819 
show that the Sunday-school of that period had 
a high state of organization. The children were 
graded into four divisions, according to their 
ability to read, and each division was sub- 
divided into ten sections, where possible. The 
first division held those who could read in the 
Testament ; the second, those who read indiffer- 
ently well; the third, those unable to read, but 
who could spell in two or more syllables; and 



Early Beginnings in America. 75 

the fourth, those in the alphabet. Each division 
received books suited to their attainments, from 
which they recited at two sessions, in the morn- 
ing and in the afternoon, each time just before 
the regular church-service. The duties of the 
teachers were clearly and minutely outlined. 
Among other things they were to wait on the 
parents of the children absent one Sunday and 
report the cause to the superintendent. It was 
their special duty to impress upon the minds 
of the children the necessity of repentance 
towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ 
during the time not occupied in hearing recita- 
tions. After the close of the school they were 
to take charge of their respective classes, lead 
them into church and sit with them during ser- 
vice. The superintendent had his duties rig- 
idly outlined and detailed. He was expected 
to oversee and arrange and not to allow addresses 
to be made to the school oftener than once a 
month, on which occasion the parents of the 
children were expected to be present. The rules 
and regulations were safe-guarded by a system 
of punishments and fines. Bad behavior in 
church on the part of the children caused a loss 
of their monthly tract, which must have been a 
great hardship. For the teachers and superin- 
tendent the punishment was direr. A teacher, 
absent at roll-call, was fined 12J cents. If 



76 The Sunday-School. 

absent from session without providing a substi- 
tute, there was a fine of 25 cents. Similar fines 
were imposed for other neglect, such as not visit- 
ing absent scholars. And all penalties, imposed 
on the superintendent, were double those of the 
teacher. Such a system, consistently carried out 
now, would hardly give the modern objector to 
the Sunday-school food for denunciation, which 
now-a-days is based upon some evil, against 
which this system provided. If the Sunday- 
school has failed in some particulars, it is not 
because of faulty ideals on the part of its foun- 
ders or early leaders, nor of the high purpose 
for which it was designed. 



CHAPTEK III. 

THE EVOLUTION OF CHURCH SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 

Transforming Effect on the Church by the 
Early Sunday-School Movement. Next to the 

Reformation, perhaps, the greatest transforma- 
tion that has ever appeared in the career of the 
Church, was introduced hy the Sunday-school 
movement in 1815. Before that year, with a 
single exception, one looks in vain for any real 
evidences of Sunday-school work in any of the 
parishes in the United States. But before the 
close of 1817 there was scarcely a parish in the 
Republic, that either had not begun schools on 
Sunday for religious instruction or was not 
preparing to start them. It is refreshing and at 
this time somewhat amusing to read the enthus- 
iastic outbursts, which effused from the pens of 
eager workers and interested patrons of that 
day. They vividly picture the ardent zeal that 
swept everything before it. The history of every 
77 



78 The Sunday-School. 

other religious revival of whatever scope pales 
before the records of the early Sunday-school 
movement for fervid utterance and soul-stirring 
effort on the part of both clergy and laity. The 
following extract from a representative Church 
journal, ordinarily somewhat staid and conser- 
vative in tone, is but a sample of what appeared 
in all periodicals of that era : "Having been once 
ardently attached to the gay and fascinating 
pleasures of the world, and having an experi- 
mental knowledge of the almost irresistible 
influence they have over the animated and fer- 
vent feelings of the youth, just starting into life, 
I cannot sufficiently admire and commend the 
superintendents and teachers of those schools 
for the noble and magnanimous devotion of their 
time and talents to the promotion of the best 
temporal and eternal interests of the rising gen- 
eration. Can anything present a more gratify- 
ing sight to man or be more acceptable to 
Heaven than the avidity with which our youth 
of both sexes, who possess the most abundant 
means of procuring and enjoying the various 
pleasures and gratifications of life, voluntarily 
enroll themselves as the preceptors and bene- 
factors of children, drawn from the abodes of 
poverty, ignorance and depravity? Misan- 
thropic and frigid, indeed, must be that heart, 
if the contemplation of such a scene will not 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 79 

warm it into enthusiastic admiration ! Noble, 



generous youth, while you erect to yourselves 
an imperishable monument, while you shed a 
brilliant lustre upon the human character, you 
are conferring benefits and blessings, infinite in 
value, upon the heretofore neglected sons and 
daughters of poverty, wretchedness and vice ! 
And I doubt not that in 'the great day of the 
Lord/ when 'every man's work shall be tried, 
of what sort it is/ many of your pupils will with 
joyful lips and grateful hearts bear testimony 
to your pious and assiduous care in preparing 
them by example and instruction for the enjoy- 
ment of that never-ending felicity and glory, 
which is reserved in heaven for all the faithful 
followers of the Lamb, slain for the sins of the 
world. Go on, pious and excellent youth ! You 
cannot want motives to perseverance, while 
there is a single dwelling in our city whose in- 
mates are ignorant, depraved and without that 
'righteousness which hath the promise of the 
life that now is and that is to come' ; while you 
daily witness the salutary effects of your bene- 
volent exertions, or while you enjoy the unspeak- 
able satisfaction of knowing that your 'work of 
faith and labor of love' will be acknowledged 
and rewarded by Him that sitteth upon the 
throne and judgeth the hearts of men." 1 
Christian Journal for September, 1819, p. 262. 



80 The Sunday-School. 

Burden of the Church's Work Centered in 
the Institutions. The "imperishable monu- 
ment," "brilliant lustre upon human character," 
"infinite blessings/' and other like expressions 
are not merely evidences of the euphuism, prev- 
alent in most literary productions of the time, 
but they portray the intensity of the religious 
spirit, which worked out a revolution in the 
Church's aims and methods. Reports of par- 
ishes and dioceses to Diocesan and General Con- 
ventions, episcopal addresses, sermons by 
bishops and clergy of all shades of thought, and 
religious addresses by the laity are full of allu- 
sions to the work of the Sunday-schools. And the 
evidence is overwhelming, that the chief bur- 
den of the Church's work, during the years, 
immediately preceding and following 1820, was 
centered in the Sunday-schools. The Sunday- 
school workers, under the active leadership of 
approving rectors, felt that they were the special 
agents of the Church, divinely appointed to save 
the world from the corruptness into which, like 
Sodom and Gomorrah, it had fallen. Bishop 
White, in his address to the Diocesan Conven- 
tion of 1818, said: "Sunday-schools were the 
happiest expedient, yet devised, for the clearing 
of the streams of corruption at their sources. 
The records of their effect on the moral state of 
extensive districts rest on evidence not to be 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 81 

resisted." Bishop Hobart, in a sermon, gave 
a similar estimate of the efficacy and importance 
of Sunday-schools in more guarded language. 2 
It was evident that the burst of enthusiasm 
started by Raikes, which had set ablaze the 
English Church, now caused American Chris- 
tianity to glow in every quarter with the fire of 
religious endeavor and missionary zeal. The 
new system of imparting religious truth aroused 
immense interest on the part of the world in the 
privileges and offices of the Church, which had 
been going to seed. And say what we will of 
the Sunday-school in theory, in the last analysis 
of its relation to the highest needs of the soul, 
for which the Church presents more serious and 
sacred offices, its wonderful success in the early 
years of halting progress of the Church forms 
an epoch in the Church's history. 

Progress of Church Sunday-Schools in Phil- 
adelphia. William A. Muhlenberg. George 
Boyd. Alonzo Potter. The Sunday-schools of 
the Church in Philadelphia, having been formed 
mainly out of existing First Day Schools, some 
of which were quite large, soon grew to insti- 

2 The Beneficial Effect of Sunday Schools, considered 
in an address delivered at the anniversary meeting of 
the Sunday-schools in union with the New York Pro- 
testant Episcopal Sunday School Society in St. Paul's 
Chapel, December, 1817. 



82 The Sunday-School. 

tutions with teeming membership and manifold 
branches of institutional activity. Those con- 
nected with Old St. Paul's Parish began with 
an enrollment of about five hundred, which the 
officers were obliged to reduce and limit because 
of the inadequate accommodations of the church- 
building. William A. Muhlenberg, James Mil- 
nor's successor in the curacy at the United Par- 
ishes, had carefully studied Lancaster's methods 
of popular teaching and became a Sunday-school 
enthusiast. His class of boys at St. James' 
became noted for its many-sided activity. 3 From 
it he effectually recruited the early boy-choir, 
which earned considerable notice at the time for 
proficiency. As early as 1819, St. Peter's 
Female School prepared and published an 
attempt at a Uniform Series of Lessons, which 
was introduced into other schools. Alonzo Pot- 
ter had come to Philadelphia after his gradua- 
tion from Union College in 1819. His first 
attendance at the Church's service is said to have 
occurred for the purpose of witnessing the ordi- 
nation of the brilliant young lawyer, George 
Boyd. The solemn office, the striking figure and 
more striking sermon of the young ordinand, 
who took for his text : "I am not mad, most noble 
Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and 
soberness," left a deep impression on the mind 

8 Life of Muhlenberg p. 54. 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 83 

of the meditative, intensely earnest young col- 
lege-student. Boyd was called to take up the 
work at St. John's, Philadelphia, and soon 
made the Sunday-school an important factor in 
the progress of the incipient parish. A Quaker 
by birth, Potter was naturally inclined toward 
the education of the lower classes and was 
powerfully moved by the efforts of the Church 
in the Sunday-schools of Philadelphia, where 
he again felt Boyd's influence and engaged in 
the work at St. Peter's among the children of 
the slums. Elsewhere in the Quaker common- 
wealth outside of Philadelphia parishes of the 
Church quickly introduced the new institution 
and welcomed it as an effective, practical means 
of overcoming the stagnation, in which the 
Church found herself after the Revolutionary 
War. 

Development in New England. In Boston, 
Massachusetts, where the second Sunday-school 
of the Church was organized in 1815, the con- 
ditions under which this educational work was 
grounded were much the same as in Philadel- 
phia, though the character of the work from 
the very start differed. The institutions, like 
the First Day Schools begun by private individ- 
uals of the Xew England metropolis — chiefly 
Unitarians — and rival gatherings, like the 



84 The Sunday-School. 

fruits of the Philadelphia Evangelical Society, 
dissolved when the Church began the real Sun- 
day-school work at Christ Church and formed 
the nuclei of Sunday-schools, most of which were 
directed by the various local church organiza- 
tions. To some of these remnants the parishes 
of the Church at Boston became residuary lega- 
tees, just as it happened at Philadelphia. Prom 
these beginnings Sunday-schools multiplied rap- 
idly in all parts of New England under the 
sturdy leadership and stirring activity of Titus 
Strong and Asa Eaton in Massachusetts, Harry 
Croswell and Nathanael Wheaton in Connecti- 
cut, Salmon Wheaton in Rhode Island, and 
Charles Burroughs in New Hampshire. 

Beginnings in New Jersey. The Sunday- 
school was early introduced into New Jersey 
by Mcllvaine, who has already been mentioned 
in connection with the Princeton union, and 
whose spiritual fervor and missionary zeal 
found worthy expression in his gatherings of 
children on Sundays during his college vacation 
in 1816 at St. Mary's, Burlington — the old New 
Jersey capital. 4 Many other parishes of the 
state were quickly touched by his zeal and gave 
immediate and strong propulsion to the new 
methods of religious training. To New Jersey 

4 Life of Mcllvaine, p. 11. 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 85 

belongs the credit of first bringing the infant 
institution to the attention of the General Con- 
vention in 1817. 

Progress in New York. Of the three New 
York parishes, which had inaugurated Sunday- 
school work in 1816, St. George's, like St. 
Paul's, Philadelphia, became famous all over 
the country for its pushing enterprise in this 
direction. It was, perhaps, the first parish in 
America to provide a separate building for its 
schools. And it is one of the few parishes whose 
early large fruits have not been allowed to dis- 
integrate in the lapse of years. 

The First General Church Sunday-School 
Society. The parishes of the Church in New 
York did not take up Sunday-school work as a 
general movement until 1817; but when it was 
fairly inaugurated by them it was the first real 
evidence of general educational enterprise dis- 
tinctively under Church auspices, In it the 
Church first set forth her educational propa- 
ganda. Up to that year and even later Sunday- 
school work in nearly all parts of the country 
had been what may be termed "interdenomina- 
tional." Little pronounced Church-teaching of 
any kind was pursued in the schools. In the 
various local Sunday-school unions, notably in 



86 The Sunday-School. 

the two at New York, teachers of all creeds came 
together into close contact. 

Bishop Hobart and Interdenominational 
Work. Bishop Hobart looked askance at this 
form of Christian unity in his own diocese and 
began strenuously to agitate for a society under 
Church government, teaching positive Church 
doctrines. He prudently recognized the strate- 
gic importance of thus instructing the young in 
the days of new beginnings and progres3ive 
reconstruction within the Church. It was not 
because he was in any sense bigoted or narrowly 
sectarian. He openly expressed his good-will 
and brotherly kindness toward the other Chris- 
tian bodies on many an occasion and was held 
in high esteem by representatives of the latter. 
Yet he felt his own followers could do better 
work for Christianity at large by strengthening 
and energizing their own branches of Christian 
activity. In his opinion the mixed enterprises 
tended to emasculate the Church forces and thus 
to unfit them for their share in the larger work 
of saving men. 

The New York Protestant Episcopal Sun- 
day-School Society. Accordingly, in February, 
1817, the JSTew York Protestant Episcopal Sun- 
day-School Society was organized and under its 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 87 

direction schools were at once begun at Trinity 
Church and its chapels, St. John's and St. 
Paul's, at Grace Church and St. Mark's. These 
schools, in spite of the fear expressed that they 
were not needed, were successful from the start. 
Their total membership at the close of the year 
was 1,250. Of them the largest and most active 
was that at St. John's Chapel, whose scholars 
numbered nearly a third of the total member- 
ship. The three schools in connection with the 
interdenominational society did not associate 
themselves with the Church organization until 
a number of years after its inception. It will 
be seen, therefore, that while in places outside 
of !New York the work of organizing and main- 
taining Sunday-schools in general was parochial 
(each parish developing its own schools under 
its own auspices), in the metropolis the enter- 
prise from the start was more concerted, work- 
ing outwards from a strong center of organiza- 
tion. This condition had much influence later 
on at the formation of the more general Church 
Sunday-School Union. 

The Philadelphia P. E. Sunday and Adult 
Society. While New York was thus developing 
Church Sunday-schools, Bishop White, whose 
diocese was the nursery of Sunday-schools in 
general, awoke to a realization of the disadvan- 



88 The Sunday-School. 

tages of interdenominational activity. The 
Church leaders who had organized the Philadel- 
phia Sunday and Adult Society for all Christian 
bodies were soon relegated to positions of 
inferior station by a more aggressive Puritan 
influence within that organization, and good- 
natured churchmen were supplanted by more 
rigorous and more pronounced Presbyterians, 
though the business policy of the society 
remained quite broad and non-partisan. There- 
fore, representatives of the Church parishes in 
and around Philadelphia, without withdrawing 
from the latter, thought best to form the Phila- 
delphia Protestant Episcopal Sunday and Adult 
Society in the Pall of 18 17. Its chief work 
was to be the publication and sale of tracts, 
books and periodicals, written from the stand- 
point of the Church. In this way the Church 
worked hand in hand with the other religious 
bodies, doing, as Bishop White said, "a reason- 
able share of the work of Christianity," yet 
maintaining without reserve her distinctive 
principles. All the Sunday-schools in Philadel- 
phia became active members of the new society 
and added others in the state at some distance 
from the Quaker City, like those of Lancaster, 
Wilkesbarre, Huntington, Bristol, and some 
even outside the state, like those in Wilmington, 
Delaware. 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 89 

Church Sunday-School Societies Not Well 
Patronized. But the Protestant Episcopal 
Sunday and Adult Society of Philadelphia did 
not accomplish very much. The "non-sectarian" 
union's liberal business policy for several years 
had its effect. Churchmen could buy fairly 
suitable tracts, books of devotion and religious 
fiction and other Sunday-school requisites in 
much greater variety and much more cheaply 
at the union-depository than at the church estab- 
lishment. The mild wisdom of Bishop White 
had the effect of softening religious animosities 
of a sectarian character, while men of that 
stamp of evangelical churchmanship, peculiar to 
St. Paul's, though not numerous, perhaps, were 
men of great influence and authority in diocesan 
councils. At its very best, therefore, the income 
of the Church society was very small. Aside 
from a half dozen books with such titles as 
"Robert The Owl" and "The Recaptured 
Negro" its publication-list was very meager. 

The New York Society More Aggressive. 

The New York Protestant Episcopal Sunday- 
School Society, laboring on somewhat different 
lines, and aiming chiefly in the direction of 
organizing and supporting schools based on 
Church principles, took unto itself somewhat 
more of a militant character. New York was 



90 The Sunday-School. 

ecclesiastically as well as geographically between 
the Toryism of Connecticut and the loyalist 
policy of Pennsylvania. Hence the New York 
society developed an enthusiasm, that always 
follows in the train of a propaganda, though 
this was of a very mild nature before 1825. 

Development in the South. In the other 
sections of the United States Sunday-schools 
developed apace. In the South, Bishop Chan- 
ning Moore, William Meade (afterward Bishop 
of Virginia) and Christopher E. Gadsden (later 
Bishop of South Carolina) were able and zeal- 
ous promoters in their respective localities. In 
1819 a very active society was formed by 
churchmen at Charleston, South Carolina, and 
proved to be an important center of influence 
for Church mission-work throughout the South. 
It was known as the Protestant Episcopal Sun- 
day-School Society of Charleston. 

Early Attempts in Ohio. Shortly after 
the consecration of Philander Chase in 1819 as 
Missionary Bishop of Ohio, which was then the 
extreme Northwest of the Bepublic, he employed 
a young divinity student, I. N. Whiting, to 
travel through the widely scattered settlements 
of that frontier region for the purpose of organ- 
izing Sunday-schools, Whiting threw himself 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 91 

into the work with great enthusiasm and the 
schools he founded were often for a long time 
the only evidences of the Church's existence in 
their neighborhoods. Laymen in the Sunday- 
schools nourished the seed sown, until regularly 
ordained clergy arrived to complete the sowing 
and to prepare for the harvests. Thus the insti- 
tution proved of immense missionary value to 
the Church in the early years of growth. 

Independence of New England Sunday- 
Schools. While many of the early Church 
Sunday-schools all over the country depended 
upon their connection with the Philadelphia 
Sunday and Adult Society for their supply of 
books and papers of all kinds, a few outside of 
New York city fell back upon their own 
resources and the talents of their leaders for 
these requisites. The Connecticut schools, espe- 
cially, under Bishop Hobart (for some time pro- 
visionary Bishop of Connecticut) took pride in 
the fact that they had never connected them- 
selves with any union, but published their own 
books, chiefly through the munificence of indi- 
viduals. The Reverend Harry Croswell, rector 
of Trinity Church, New Haven, wrote a series 
of text-books and was otherwise active in sup- 
plying Sunday-school literature. 

In Rhode Island the Diocesan Convention, to 



92 The Sunday-School. 

a certain extent, performed the duties of a 
Sunday-school union, supervising the organiza- 
tion and maintenance of the schools within the 
state. Money and books were furnished by 
grants from the diocesan treasury. 

Routine of Early Church Schools. Place of 
Assembly. The Church Sunday-schools be- 
tween 1815 and 1825 conformed in general 
to the routine as detailed in the last chapter. 
There were many variations, however, and each 
parish had its own by-laws and regulations. 
The place, where the sessions were held, was in 
the church itself, certain portions of which were 
designated by the vestries for occupation by the 
classes. Few parishes had basements in the 
church-buildings and fewer still had the means 
to buy or lease extra buildings like St. George's, 
Xew York. The rear ends of the galleries were 
ordinarily used for the school-sessions, so that 
the children were grouped about the organ, when 
there was one in its customary place. The chil- 
dren, thus, proceeded conveniently to the front 
or chancel-ends of the galleries for church- 
worship at the close of the sessions. 

Departments Based on Sex. As yet there 
was no division into separate departments like 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 93 

infant 5 , main or Bible schools. The only divi- 
sion was that based on sex. The male and 
female departments were really separate schools, 
each with its own privileges. 

Government Varied. The organization for 
the government of the early Sunday-schools was 
a rather complex affair and varied with the 
Clmrchmanship of the leaders. In Connecticut 
and other parts of !New England, where the 
Scottish non-juring ideals of ecclesiasticism pre- 
vailed, the rector and vestry of the parish 
assumed immediate control of the schools and 
directed the details of government. The rector 
maintained personal control of the teaching, 
while the vestrymen assumed the responsibility 
of the temporal affairs. This plan of manage- 
ment had the effect of overcoming the hostility 
still nursed against the Sunday-school in New 
England because of the opposition to the lay- 
control of the teaching. 

Ordinary Methods of Administration. The 

ordinary method of administration, however, 
Must when the Infant Schools became separate de- 
partments is hard to tell. In 1824 a society was formed 
for the promotion of Infant Schools under the presi- 
dency of Lord Lansdowne. They were then day schools 
for little tots running loose on the streets of English 
cities. As yet great opposition was made against taking 
small children out of the tutelage of parents. {Phila- 
delphia Recorder, Aug. 13, 1825, p. 77.) See p. 293 (3). 



9i The Sunday-School. 

was of a more popular character. It was by 
means of a parish Sunday-school society dis- 
tinct (sometimes very much so) from the vestry. 
Very often the rector was president of this 
organization and the assistant-minister vice- 
president, though in many cases the laity held 
all the offices. In the latter case the rector was 
the patron. The membership of the society was 
largely passive, consisting of many contributors. 
The executive body was a hoard of directors, 
which in some dioceses assumed great dignity 
and directed the practical management of the 
school. This was the practice in New York, 
especially, where the executive organization of 
the Sunday-school remained for some time 
exactly like that of the old-time district-school. 
The board appointed three of their number in 
rotation to take charge each Sunday. These 
three directors were called superintendents, and 
their duty was to visit the schools and "to sit on 
the action of scholars, teachers and the perma- 
nent superintendent," who was the working head 
of the institution and received his appointment 
from the board. He was often a salaried official. 
Each school usually had detailed rules of con- 
duct and an elaborate code of discipline, the 
ultimate judgment being vested in the persons 
of the three superintendents. Thus, for exam- 
ple, a teacher, in whose class a scholar showed 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 95 

himself amenable to none of the ordinary forms 
of punishment, had to report the case to the 
permanent superintendent. That official was 
empowered to collar the offender and to eject 
him into the street, but could not finally expel 
the culprit from the school. Only the body of 
superintendents could do that after mature 
investigation and deliberation. 

Systems of Rewards. In all the Church 
schools elaborate systems of rewards, as well as 
of punishments, were in vogue. In some of the 
male schools, like that of Trinity Church, New 
York, sums of money (from twelve and a half 
down to two cents) were given for various 
degrees of good conduct, prompt attendance and 
proficiency in lessons. It is gravely recorded in 
the Christian Journal 6 that even twelve and a 
half cents was not a worthy reward for two boys 
who had learned seven thousand verses from 
the Bible. But, as far as can be learned, there 
is no record of any girls having received any- 
thing but the usual red and blue tickets or 
tracts. Money awards, however, do not seem 
to have been conducive to the success of the 
schools. Trinity Sunday-school in 1828 had a 
wofully small attendance. 

6 Christian Journal for 181.\ See index. 



96 The Sunday-School. 

Sessions. Vacations. Church Attendance. 

In the Sunday-school year there were ordinarily 
two terms of three months each, during the 
Spring and Fall, the schools being closed for a 
like period in the Summer and Winter. It was 
the custom of the teachers to volunteer for a 
term of three months only. The membership of 
the early schools, in consequence, was very fluc- 
tuating. What was lost between seasons, how- 
ever, was made up in the strenuous routine that 
obtained, when sessions were held. The teachers 
and children were expected to devote at least 
seven hours each Lords' day, four to Sunday- 
school work and three to the Church's services. 
One of the main purposes of the institution was 
the inculcation of the duty of church attendance. 
It was regarded as essential to the religious life 
of the children as the learning of the catechism. 
At first the sexton — often with a long rod — 
exercised the disciplinary functions over the 
scholastic body in church, but his life was often 
made miserable by the antics of irrepressible 
charges. The teachers then were called into 
action and the oversight of the classes in church 
came to be one of the most important responsi- 
bilities of these devoted servants of the Master. 
Frequently the hours in session were increased 
by keeping the scholars after the afternoon 
church service to practice chanting the Psalms 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 97 

and singing hymns or carols. Chanting the 
Psalter was soberly recommended as an excel- 
lent hygienic exercise by certain churchmen, 
who, perhaps, were at that stage of the Church's 
progress still diffident about arousing any unto- 
ward suspicions. 7 Whatever it may have been 
for the scholar, Sunday was by no means a day 
of inaction for the teacher. 

Strenuousness of Early Sunday-School 
Work. Yet the arduous labors were borne 
with a patience and enthusiastic zeal that would 
have done credit to the self-sacrificing devotion 
of the faithful in the early days of Christianity. 
The spiritual tone was everywhere of a high 
order. The early Sunday-school teachers had 
exalted ideals of their calling. The sentiment 
often found expression that "inefficient as the 
position may seem to some, no station in life can 
be more responsible. ? Tis solemn as the Day 
of Judgment, splendid as the glory of heaven, 
awful as the depths of hell and extensive as 
eternity." It is evident that such a position was 
taken very seriously. 8 

Character of the Moral Training. The moral 
training in the early period of Sunday-school 

7 Ibid., for July, 1819, p. 209. 

8 Third Report of the Philadelphia Sunday and 
Adult Society. 



98 The Sunday-School. 

activity, generally, was like that usual in per- 
iods of religious revival from long-continued 
and wide-spread states of indifference and infi- 
delity, — decidedly Puritan in character. The 
moral ideals were somewhat transcendental and 
even fanatical in conception. The teaching was 
bluntly plain and uncompromising in its expres- 
sion. The prevailing motive sprang from a 
drastic, intensely earnest conception of exper- 
iential conversion that was often acutely mater- 
ialistic in action, while highly spiritual in tone. 
The opportunities for press-publication being 
few, these ideals found favorite expression in 
the reports of teachers and superintendents, 
which often teemed with detailed instances of 
youthful and parental folly and its dire results. 
Thus, for example, a report of St. Paul's Chapel 
school, New York City, pathetically moralizes 
on the experience of a boy, who, "contrary to his 
own wish (for he wanted to go to school) was 
taken by his father on a Sunday's excursion of 
pleasure and unfortunately drowned." 9 The 
same document tells about "the love of truth pre- 
vailing with the scholars to a high degree. Many 
interesting instances in proof of this have trans- 
pired during the year. One is here given: 
An orphan child seven years old, who was kept 

"Report of St. Paul's Chapel to the N. Y. P. E. S. 
S. Society for 1819. 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 99 

from school one Sunday for want of clean 
clothes (the neglect of his aged grandmother), 
was directed by her to say to the superintendent 
that he was sick. But the child, on being exam- 
ined by the superintendent the following Sun- 
day, said: 'he was ordered by his grandmother 
to say he was sick, but he knew it was wrong 
to say so, and although she would chastise him 
for telling the truth, he was determined to do 
it.' " The hoy was rewarded with the highest 
honors of the school! All this indicates a search- 
ing and far-reaching moral influence on the part 
of Sunday-school training. 

Not Long in the Category of Charity 
Schools. It is to be noted that the institution 
in xlmerica did not remain long in the category 
of purely charitable means of educating the 
young from the lowest social circles, in which 
category, indeed, it was put by its founder. In 
many sections it really never was what Raikes 
designed it to be. In parts of New England, 
where educational ideals were the family 
penates; where schools, academies and lyceums 
were numerous and Bibles to be found in every 
house, the Sunday-school from the date of the 
organization of the first Church school included 
all the children of the parish. 10 This was in a 

"Report of St. Paul's School, Boston, Mass., to the 
General P. E. S. S. Union for 1830. It was not long be- 



LofC. 



100 The Sunday-School. 

measure true also of the outlying and thinly 
settled portions of the country outside of New 
England. Here the dearth of the clergy had 
been severely felt from the first in the insuffi- 
cient services of every character. Being often 
the only public means of religious instruction 
for old as well as young, the Sunday-school sup- 
plied a deeply felt lack and was attended by all 
classes of children at the very start. In the 
South 11 was strongly felt the influence of the 
Church of England, in which the institution had 
grown to be a recognized and popular means of 
religious training for all classes. Hence, even 
in the strong centers of population there, it 
soon became much more than an institution for 
the unchurched poor and illiterates. On the 
other hand, in not a few places (chiefly large 
cities of older foundation in the Middle States) 
the children of the well-to-do church people have 
never been regularly enrolled. In these it has 
been familiarly styled as "the best of the 
Church's charities" — a designation at no time, 
however, a proper characterization of the insti- 
tution. 

fore teachers and workers went out from these parish 
Sunday-schools to establish mission schools on Sundays 
for the poor in the more densely populated quarters. 

"Report of St. Michael's, Charleston, S. C. to same 
for 1830. 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 101 

Aid to the Church in the Decade Following 
1812. In the last half of the first decade after 
its entrance into the Church's life the Sunday- 
school was already a most significant factor in 
the Church's progress. Introduced as a make- 
shift for a regular agency that had been par- 
alyzed by an untoward, but perfectly natural 
sequence of events ; regarded by a few as an ille- 
gitimate offspring of the force of circumstances ; 
yet gladly accepted by all at a time when even 
"Egyptian help" might have offered overcom- 
ing temptations to the despairing leaders, the 
infant agency soon burst its swaddling bands 
and emerged a lusty, aggressively militant 
exponent of the Church's life. And not only 
this — the seeds of greater and broader influence 
were sown and at once sprang up, reaching out 
into the social and political life of the nation. 

Muhlenberg in Central Pennsylvania. It 

was in 1820 that William A. Muhlenberg left 
his successful Sunday-school work at St. James' 
Church, Philadelphia, to build a fine Sunday- 
school house at Lancaster, where he was instru- 
mental in developing wonderful educational 
results among the school-loving Germans in that 
garden section of Central Pennsylvania. From 
here all his reports to the Diocesan Conventions 
glowingly relate of the growth of his congrega- 



102 The Sunday-School. 

tion, "chiefly through the Sunday-school, the 
most interesting object in his parish." 12 It was 
in this period that this devoted educator began 
to dream dreams and to see visions of the 
Church's adoption of a policy planning a sys- 
tem of general schools, which should supply 
every educational need of the nation. It was to 
seek the fulfilment of his vision that he left 
Lancaster in 1825, like a knight-errant, not con- 
sidering whither his quest would lead him or 
how it would practically eventuate. 13 

Activity of Early Leaders in New York 
State. It was during this period that Whit- 
tingham, the great Sunday-school apostle, 
entered the General Seminary and with restless 
ardor began his public career by starting a 
Sunday-school in Jersey City — only, to be 
driven off the field by what in his diary he 
feelingly complains of as "the wiles of a rival 
religious body." 14 During this period the two 
Onderdonks and Wainwright wielded the im- 
mense force of their learning and influence to 
increase the already great activity of the 
N"ew York Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School 
Society. Henry Anthon, succeeding at Ked 

"Journal of the Diocesan Convention of Pennsyl- 
vania for 1823, p. 20. 

"Life of Muhlenberg, p. 78. 
"Life of Whittingham, p. 61. 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 103 

Hook, Duchess County, in the interior of New 
York state, while Bedell failed in the near-by 
town of Hudson on account of Puritan opposi- 
tion, went to Utica — an important outpost in 
that day. There he threw the weight of his 
splendid educational talents into the task of ex- 
tending the Church's influence by his scholarly 
development of her new agency for instructing 
her children. 

Philadelphia Schools and the Liberian Mis- 
sion. Early in 1820, Bankson, the originator 
of the Philadelphia Sunday and Adult Union 
and the Protestant Episcopal Sunday and Adult 
Society, gave St. Paul's male school a more than 
national fame, in that he made it the back-bone 
of the Liberian mission in West Africa, which 
was the product of American religious enter- 
prise. 15 It was the preliminary work of men 
like Bankson that called the attention of the 
nation to the beneficence and hopefulness of the 
Liberian enterprise. When Bankson and his 
companion died of fever on the African coast 
after less than a year's heroic struggle to plant 
institutions for the education of the sable chil- 

15 Tlie Liberian Republic was founded by American 
philanthropists in 1822. The Missionary Jurisdiction of 
Cape Palmas and the adjacent parts of West Africa, the 
oldest and largest foreign missionary jurisdiction of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, was organized in 1834. 



104 The Sunday-School. 

dren, word was at once transmitted to St. Paul's 
school. Out of the deep, painful impression it 
made on the assembled children, who revered 
their former secretary, sprang the inspiration 
into the hearts of several young men, who at 
once volunteered to take the places of the 
deceased. 

Inception of the Domestic and Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society. It was in 1820 that the Gen- 
eral Convention organized and adopted the first 
draft of a constitution for the Protestant Epis- 
copal Society in the United States for Do- 
mestic and Foreign Missions with headquar- 
ters in Philadelphia. The immediate election 
of Samuel J. Eobbins and the Rev. George 
Boyd, as the first two General Secretaries, both 
known chiefly for their ceaseless activity in the 
fore-front of the Sunday-school movement, 
shows how powerfully the inspiration of this 
movement already animated the missionary 
pulse of the Church. 

Growth of the Sunday-School Societies. It 

is impossible to give accurate statistics of Sun- 
day-school work for this period. The three large 
societies, or rather associations of societies, in 
Philadelphia, K~ew York and Charleston were 
gradually enlarging their circles of influence, 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 105 

so that their circumferences began to touch each 
other. Numerous other associations grew up 
beyond and between these great centers, not only 
extending the Church's influence on the fron- 
tiers in all directions, but compactly welding 
together her interior connections, which was of 
greater significance than all else. 

Centralization of the Various Church Agen- 
cies. Aside from the fact of great growth these 
years form an important period of centraliza- 
tion within the Church. They do not, of course, 
comprehend the first efforts in the direction of 
the co-ordination of her now numerous and 
varied activities, but in them appeared the first 
fruits of these efforts bearing the marks of true 
permanence. In the first three decades of her 
existence as a corporate organization in America 
the Church had been travailing under the dis- 
tracting burdens of discord due to scattered 
forces and heterogeneous influences. The lack 
of cohesion in every department of her activity 
had been the worst foe of progress. After the 
enthusiastic first Sunday-school campaign unify- 
ing influences began to assert their ascendency. 
Centralization was in the air. 

The General Seminary. Contemporaneous 
with the organization of the first General Mis- 



106 The Sunday-School. 

sionary Society, in 1820, came the consolida- 
tion of certain important educational agencies. 
This prompted the removal of the nuclei of the 
General Seminary from Connecticut and else- 
where to New York and the calling of the spe- 
cial General Convention of 1821 to promote 
the general interest of church people in the rise 
of this institution. 

The General Protestant Episcopal Sunday- 
School Union. At the General Convention of 
1826, held in Philadelphia, was effected the con- 
solidation of the various Sunday-school interests 
in the formation of the General Protestant Epis- 
copal Sunday-School Union. For several years 
the want of such a general society had been felt 
by the clergy and laity of the various dioceses, 
and the need was openly expressed in a number 
of Diocesan Conventions prior to 1826. The 
initiative was taken by the Philadelphia Pro- 
testant Episcopal Sunday and Adnlt Society, 
which in 1825 "projected a plan for the union 
of all the Episcopal Sunday-school societies and 
entrusted the subject to a committee." 

Bolder Maintenance of Distinctive Church 
Principles. One of the first results of these 
unifying and centralizing movements within the 
Church was the aggressive maintenance of many 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 107 

of her distinctive principles. This was espe- 
cially true of the Sunday-school movement. It 
must be remembered that up to 1815 the 
Church's position as regards her traditional doc- 
trines and practices was, in general, weakly 
apologetic. She had to apologize for her con- 
nection with the Church of England as well as 
for her suspicious and ominous relationship with 
the Catholic Church, which term then was the 
common and almost exclusive designation of the 
Roman branch. Both of these bodies were 
regarded by the great majority of American 
Christians as equally "scarlet" in disposition 
and tendency. Few of the leaders felt disposed 
to assume a positive outspoken attitude on even 
the most distinctive essentials held by the 
Church. Presbyterian writers, for example, not 
infrequently maintained in their public prints 
that they judged from Bishop White's pub- 
lished writings he was not a "believer in apos- 
tolic succession." 

Effect of Interdenominational Aggressive- 
ness. The inclination on political and eccles- 
iastical grounds to apologize for the Church's 
antecedents led to a meek submission on the 
part of many church-people to the attacks of 
an aggressive opposition, which faulted the 
Church's principles. This begot a situation that 



108 The Sunday-School. 

by the early leaders was pronounced full of 
danger to the Church's future. 16 It manifested 
itself particularly in the Sunday-school work. 
As has been intimated very many of the Church 
Sunday-schools had associated themselves with 
the interdenominational union-societies and 
drew on the depositories of these unions for 
most, if not all of their own lesson-books and 
general literature. As these unions grew 
stronger and sectarian influences began to pre- 
dominate, their publications and periodicals took 
on a more uncompromising tone, and widely 
transcended what might have been expected 
from a spirit of Christian unity. 17 

Disingenuousness of the American Sunday- 
School Union. When the American Sunday- 
School Union was organized, a more militant 
aggressiveness manifested itself against the 
Church's doctrine. Much of the general relig- 
ious literature of the time consisted of reprints 
of books published in England under the aus- 
pices of the Church of England. These in the 
reproduction were curiously mutilated to suit 
the taste of the opposition. 18 Popular and famil- 
iar stories like The Dairyman s Daughter, no 

16 See Church Register, January 12, 1828, p. 14. 
17 See Episcopal Watchman, May 3 1827, p. 55. 
18 Ibid., January, 1829, p. 343. 



The Evolution of Church Sunday-Schools. 109 

longer told about a vicar and his curate, nor 
about a bishop and his confirmation visits, but 
about the persons and customs peculiar to the 
meeting-house. Occasionally the hypocrites and 
villains in the tales were made to represent the 
Church's standards of morality, while the heroes 
and good characters typified the virtues of dis- 
sent. It is somewhat amusing to read Harry 
Croswell's expression of concern, because in 
Church Sunday-schools historical treatises, pub- 
lished by the American Union, were circulated 
and studied, in which awful persecutions of dis- 
senters by cruel churchmen were luridly 
recounted, while a categorical halo was drawn 
about the motives and achievements of the dis- 
senting maytyrs. 

Fears of Early Church Leaders. Such con- 
ditions troubled the early leaders in the Church 
not a little. The fear that the rising generations 
might be lost to the Church in this way long 
menaced Bishop White's peace of mind. For a 
number of years following 1818 he made it his 
custom to address his Diocesan Convention on 
the great importance of making the "instruction 
in the Sunday-schools a branch of the religious 
instruction growing out of the principles of our 
Church." "There should be excluded," he 
maintained, "all exterior influence, which in- 



110 The Sunday-School. 

stead of producing liberality is sure to lead to 
contention, having never been attempted with- 
out the exaction of our yielding some of the 
properties of our system conceived of as impor- 
tant by us." 

Need of a General Church Society. In the 

agitation for a general society grounded dis- 
tinctively on Church principles the venerable 
presiding bishop of the early Church was ably 
and actively supported by Bishop Hobart and all 
the other leaders of the time, not least among 
whom were those of the South, like William 
Meade, who appealed strongly for! a larger 
organization to "publish tracts and books that 
were required to attach the young members of 
the Church to her communion." 19 

19 First Annual Report of the General P. E. S. S. 
Union, p. 21. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE GENERAL PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL SUNDAY- 
SCHOOL UNION. 

Efforts to Form an American S. P. C. K. So- 
ciety. The promoters of the proposed consol- 
idation of Sunday-school interests sought to 
gain official authority for the new society as a 
general institution of the Church by securing 
the appointment of a committee at the General 
Convention of 1826. This committee was to 
consider the formation of an American Society 
for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, sim- 
ilar to the well-known English Societies. Such 
an association, however, did not meet the wants 
of Sunday-school enthusiasts, it being in design 
but a publication-agency for Sunday-school and 
^ther religious literature. !Nbr, on the other 
hand, was the Church at large then ready for 
another addition to her several weighty respon- 
111 



112 The Sunday-School. 

sibilities newly clothed with official organiza- 
tion. The committee reported, therefore, that 
"while they approved the scheme of such society 
which had been presented for their considera- 
tion and deemed it worthy the favorable regard 
and patronage of all the friends of the Church, 
it was inexpedient at that time for the General 
Convention to legislate on the subject." 

Incorporation of the General Union. That 
evening without waiting for further action by 
the Convention a large number of bishops and 
deputies met under the presidency of Bishop 
White and soon arranged for the incorporation 
of the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday- 
School Union. Bishop Hobart was the leading 
spirit in the arrangement of the details of organ- 
ization, which in many respects resembled those 
of the General Missionary Society, as then con- 
stituted. Its membership consisted of the 
bishops and deputies of the General Convention 
and other persons contributing certain sums of 
money. Like the early Missionary Society it 
was hardly a general institution, therefore. 

A Great Missionary Agency. The Sunday- 
School Union was in design and reality much 
more than a book-concern. Like the American 
Sunday-School Union one of its chief aims at 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 113 

first was the propagation of Sunday-schools. In 
the pursuit of this aim it became a great mis- 
sionary agency — greater even than the Domes- 
tic and Foreign Society, which was hampered by 
its peculiar organization under a dual govern- 
ment. It also assumed the functions of an 
accredited propaganda, presenting the Church's 
principles of faith and practice, aggressively 
setting up centers of Church influence in all 
directions, and especially on the frontiers of the 
Republic. 

Enlistment of Whittingham and Other Young 
Men in the Cause. One of the most noteworthy 
incidents crowning the Union's incorporation 
was the immediate enlistment in its service of a 
group of brilliant young men, whose burning 
enthusiasm and sustained energy added great 
momentum to the progress of Sunday-school 
work. Among them were William R. Whitting- 
ham, Henry J. Morton, John V. Van Ingen and 
Henry Gregory. Much of the growth of the 
Union in its early years was due to the inspiring 
zeal of Whittingham, who was a protege of 
Bishop Hobart and who seconded his ecclesias- 
tical superior's strenuous activity with restless 
vigor and consummate skill. Some of these 
young men like Whittingham were students at 
the General Seminary. Others, like Morton, 



114 The Sunday-School. 

left promising professional careers to enter the 
ministry. 

The Opening of Another Period of Great 
Progress in the Church. The incorporation of 
the Union was the commencement of another 
period of great progress within the Church. 
Organization welded together the scattered 
forces, which were working in many quarters 
with enthusiasm, it is true, but separately and 
at a great disadvantage. From now on it was 
the triumphant advance of a well-ordered army. 
Its general, the saintly and venerable Bishop 
White, poured into the work the influence of 
his best powers. Bishop Hobart's magnetic per- 
sonality and wonderful executive ability gave 
to the new movement the eclat of a crusade. 
Other leaders among the clergy added their 
influence and the fire of their enthusiasm to the 
well-directed zeal of the already seasoned vet- 
erans of the previous decade. A host of laymen, 
some intellectually and socially among the great- 
est in the nation, labored devotedly and self- 
sacrificingly to make the triumph of the Sun- 
day-school army more sure and effective. Sun- 
day-schools with every feature designed to facil- 
itate the religious instruction of the young were 
quickly established and sturdily maintained — 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 115 

very often in places where no one had dreamed 
of seeing a vestige of the Church's fabric. 

Book Depositories and Publications. All 

sorts of agencies were started into action to aid 
and confirm the progress of the work. Ener- 
getic and eloquent men were sent out in all direc- 
tions to plead the promotion of the Sunday- 
school cause. A number of Booh Depositories, 
with special agents to oversee them, were estab- 
lished in strategic centers and at a nominal cost 
large quantities of Church literature in various 
forms reached the homes of people of all sorts 
of religious belief. Two monthly periodicals 
bearing on Sunday-school work were published 
by the Union. One, the Children s Magazine, 
was particularly successful and soon gained a 
circulation of nearly ten thousand copies. The 
other, entitled Family Visitor and Sunday- 
School Magazine, was a combination of several 
Sunday-school periodicals already existing. It 
was somewhat ponderously edited and did not 
circulate as widely as the former, but it proved 
to be an excellent medium for the dissemina- 
tion of the Church's principles. 

The N. Y. P. E. Press. Most important of 
all was the organization of a complete printing 
and publishing establishment, for which many 



116 The Sunday-School. 

thousand dollars were subscribed. It was called 
The New York Protestant Episcopal Press and 
was located in the rear of Trinity Church. A 
spacious four-story building was erected for it 
and soon housed one of the most comprehensive 
outfits of its kind in the United States. 
Employed to print the official documents of the 
General Convention and other accredited bodies 
as well as to publish the productions of most of 
the Church's scholars, it soon became the work- 
ing center of the Church's early propaganda. 

Career of Whittingham, the Sunday-School 
Apostle. It has been said that the best way to 
reveal the nature of a movement in history and 
to measure its effects is to study the careers of 
representative men in their most intimate rela- 
tionship to the movement. This is well exempli- 
fied in the deeds of the group of young men 
touched by the ardor of the great Xew York 
bishop, and particularly of Whittingham, whose 
career faithfully mirrors the character of the 
early Sunday-school movement. 

Seminary Life. Whittingham loved to speak 
of himself as having never been anything but a 
Sunday-school teacher. At the age of seven he 
was more than a scholar and from his four- 
teenth year he taught continuously. Entering 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 117 

the General Seminary in his seventeenth year 
he was one of the first students of the reorgan- 
ized institution. He soon showed the bent of 
his mind by starting the Sunday-school in Jer- 
sey City, about whose fate mention has already 
been made. Soon afterward he engaged in the 
Sunday-school work that grew into the parish 
of St. Peter's, New York. While still a sem- 
inary undergraduate he became superintendent 
of the school at Zion Church, which under his 
direction grew to be the largest and among the 
most efficient in the metropolis. 

Bishop Hobart 's Choice. Bishop Hobart 
followed his career to graduation with close 
interest. At the inception of the Union, Whit- 
tingham was singled out as the man best fitted 
to arrange the practical details of organization 
in the capacity of Secretary of the Committee 
of Arrangements, of which Bishop Hobart, Wil- 
liam H. DeLancey, Jackson Kemper, Harry 
Croswell and James Montgomery were members. 
Elected General Secretary of the Union, the 
immense burden of gathering together the sev- 
eral hundred individual Sunday-school societies 
and local unions all over the country into close 
touch and harmonious action with the central 
organization, of planning aggressive operations 
and setting into successful motion the many pro- 



118 The Sunday-School. 

posed activities of the Union, fell mainly upon 
the shoulders of the young man, not yet old 
enough to be in priest's orders. 

Difficulties and Embarrassments. The task 
confronting the Sunday-school enthusiasts of 
this period was of greater magnitude and more 
fraught with embarrassments than might appear 
many years after its undertaking. For thirty 
years and more the Church had struggled to 
unite the few dioceses in the acceptance of her 
Constitutions. In all those years progress had 
been slow and wearisome. The leaders had not 
ventured to set in the foundation of the Church's 
organization more than the barest essentials of 
her faith and practice. Had even these been 
clearly defined and minutely detailed results 
might have been tardier and less complete. Now 
in good faith came the attempt to test and top 
the foundations so laboriously laid by uniting 
the various parishes in a union that involved the 
frankest and minutest statement of theological 
and ecclesiastical opinion. To the spiritual 
insight and tactful sagacity of Whittingham, 
chiefly, was due the wonderful success of the 
Union from the start. 

Complete Scheme of Uniform Lessons. In 

addition to the immense amount of work 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 119 

entailed in the incipient organization, he under- 
took the publication of a series of lesson-booklets 
to put into practical operation a very complete 
scheme of uniform lessons outlined by him. In 
this he made use of some of the material pre- 
pared by Harry Croswell and others. Besides 
all this he arranged for the publication of the 
two monthly magazines issued by the Union, 
assuming their editorship in person. For these 
manifold duties, which might well have occu- 
pied two or three men ordinarily interested in 
the cause promoted, he received practically no 
stipend. It was to him truly a labor of love and 
he bravely undertook to earn a living for him- 
self by accepting the chaplaincy of the New 
York Protestant Episcopal Charity School, 
where, among other offices, he preached to the 
children on Sunday afternoons afjer the long 
Sunday-school hours. It came to be quite a fad 
at that time for New Yorkers and strangers vis- 
iting the city to hear Whittingham exhort the 
charity scholars. 

Whittingham's Personal Traits. The picture 
of the tall, gaunt young man, six feet two in 
height, whose clothes hung like bags from his 
ungainly person ; whose irregular features were 
styled "mortal ugly" by a friend; who long 
after graduation from the seminary continued 



120 The Sunday-School. 

to wear a boy's short round-about jacket, with 
a boy's broad white linen collar (tied with a 
black ribbon) over it to the shoulders, about 
which his long hair fell in glossy clusters ; who 
amused many a stranger by his nervous, awk- 
ward gestures; but whose lustrous dark eyes 
gleamed with prophetic fire — that was what 
presented itself, when this early Sunday-school 
apostle arose to pour into the ears of his hearers 
the benedictions of a rich, melliloquent voice 
and a sweet, devout spirit. The children, quick 
to detect sincerity and singleness of heart, and 
to recognize and reciprocate the affection radiat- 
ing from a lovely personality, always mani- 
fested their deep devotion and staunch loyalty. 

His Churchmanship. Eschewing the cus- 
tomary clerical "choker/' above the temptations 
of ecclesiastical fads, untrammelled by the 
"restraints of the letter," his broad, catholic 
spirit spanned the extremes of age, of physical 
and theological temperament in his people. He 
it was who popularized Bishop Hobart's motto : 
"Evangelical Truth and Apostolic Order/' 
Sometimes styled a Low Churchman by extrem- 
ists, prayed for in a series of lectures given by 
Presbyterians in Orange, N". J., to combat his 
"papist" teaching, he was not to be driven from 
his catholic breadth to the narrow plane of party 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 121 

spirit. In this lie was but a type of the Chureli- 
manship current in the first half of the nine- 
teenth century. It was good-natured, tolerant, 
broad-gauged. 

Travels as Agent of the Union. Appointed 
agent of the Union in 1828, after having 
arranged the details of organization, he set out 
to go through the cities, establishing Sunday- 
schools, addressing conventions and arousing- 
renewed interest among the congregations. Like 
the apostle, he bore a stake in the flesh, often 
lapsing into fainting spells after great exertions, 
which he never evaded. His first visit was at 
Philadelphia, where he tells us he walked many 
miles on a very hot day with blood-soaked stock- 
ings. In his diary he describes his experience 
at St. Stephen's Church with Dr. James Mont- 
gomery. Such a visit usually began with two 
hours' work in the Sunday-schools, addressing 
the scholars, then the teachers, then examining 
various classes and finally teaching the teachers 
according to the Union's system. After dismis- 
sal of the schools came the church-service, at 
which he preached to a large congregation, 
including the great Henry Clay, the British 
ambassador and other notables. "He told them 
the truth as plainly as he knew how, even declar- 
ing solemnly that the rich needed Sunday- 



122 The Sunday-School. 

schools more than the poor ; that their neglect of 
religious education was a crying sin. Henry 
Clay was pleased to attend to him remarkably 
and to express the warmest approbation of his 
sermon. " Whittingham thus touched the sore 
spot of the era and suggested the true cure. 

In this enterprise he was ably seconded by 
Van Ingen, who was a good financier, and who 
reaped in money what Whittingham sowed. In 
their travels the magic lantern or stereopticon 
was much used, which instrument is said to be 
of very modern application. 

Labors in Editing. Whittingham edited the 
various devotional publications and story-books 
issued by the Union, also. Morton's fine artis- 
tic talent was pressed into service to illustrate 
them as well as the Children s Magazine and 
Family Visitor. Morton is also said to have 
painted lantern-slides for the stereopticon lec- 
tures. 

Parish Work at Orange, N. J. Broken down 
by the exhausting labors, he gave up his general 
work for the Union and took charge of a mis- 
sion at Orange, retaining the editorship of the 
Union's two monthly periodicals. His first care 
in the new field was to establish a strong Sun- 
day-school; and it became an important factor 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 123 

in the development of an influential parish in 
that section, where the Church's forces, then 
weak, are now strong. He had two Bible classes 
on week-days, for which he prepared himself 
even more carefully than for his sermons. His 
congregation grew rapidly in what was then a 
Presbyterian stronghold. And it was, as Whit- 
tingham always maintained, but an example of 
the Church's growth through the instrumental- 
ity of the Sunday-school, consistently applied. 

Manager of the N. Y. P. E. Press. In 1830 

Whittingham undertook the management of the 
New York Protestant Episcopal Press, giving 
up his parish at the earnest solicitation of the 
Sunday-School Union. From it he issued much 
Sunday-school literature, and more particularly 
a series of theological books, which at that time 
were recognized as comprehending the general 
scope of the Church's teachings. Known as the 
most scholarly man of the Church at that period 
he was thus the central figure in her contempor- 
ary propaganda. Amid the enormous labors 
of editing enough books to have kept three men 
busy, it is refreshing to note the deep spiritual- 
ity, which fertilized the dry, fatiguing drudgery. 
Visited by an old friend, a clergyman, who a 
little while before had learned to feel more 
deeply bis personal relationship to God, Whit- 



124 The Sunday-School. 

tingham wrote in his diary : "An hour's conver- 
sation with , animated and cheering! 

Pie is a new man ! After preaching to others 
nearly five years he has at last found himself to 
be a guilty sinner, needing pardon. He has 
thrown himself at the foot of the Cross and has 
known Jesus to be precious. Jubila! Anima 
meal His mouth overflows from the abundance 
of his heart. He longs to say to all around 
him what a dear Saviour he had found. He 
delights in speaking of the wonders of redeem- 
ing love. He feels the spiritual ignorance of 
his people to be a burden upon him. He is 
striving to change it. God's mercy be praised !" 
This terse, vivid exposition of a heart, untainted 
by hypocrisy, is especially interesting in that it 
shows the influences behind the early Sunday- 
school movement. Replete with the catch- 
phrases of the revival meeting, though tinged 
with an ecclesiastical spirit that our dissenting 
brethren loved to denounce as of foreign obed- 
ience, it displays clearly the deep spirituality 
that animated Sunday-school workers every- 
where. Whittingham differed only in degree 
from others. It was the sincerity of this relig- 
ious striving that in the early days of his epis- 
copate led dissenters to say: "He may be a 
High Church bishop, but he is a true Christian." 
It was this deep spirituality that brought such 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union J 25 

wonderful success to the early Sunday-school 
movement. 

Rectorship of St. Luke's, N. Y. Called to 
the rectorship of St. Luke's, New York, on the 
elevation of Bishop Ives, the former rector, he 
built a large Sunday-school and parish house, 
an addition which few parishes then had. In it 
he developed his educational work to such an 
extent and efficiency as to rival the evangelical 
leaders of Philadelphia. 1 His Bible-classes 
became quite the vogue in the metropolis. Again 
citizens and strangers flocked to hear his teach- 
ing and came away impressed and, if not Epis- 
copalians, warmly inclined to the Church. In 
this work Whittingham showed what the Sun- 
day-school might accomplish in a large and 
wealthy parish. 

Contact With the Old Catholics of Germany 
and Switzerland. Whittingham's conviction of 
the immense benefit to the Church of the Sun- 
day-school enterprise and his enthusiasm for its 
promotion moved him to devote even his hours 
of recuperation to its interests. Ordered to stop 
his parish-work or lose his life, he went abroad 
with Van Ingen, but made the trip partly a mis- 
second Annual Report of the Pennsylvania Diocesan 
S. S. Society, p. 14. 



126 The Sunday-School. 

sionary journey to the Old Catholics in Switzer- 
land and Germany, who heard the tidings of 
the new institution and sent hack considerable 
gold for the Union's treasury. 

Henry Gregory as Whittingham's Successor. 

Gregory succeeded Whittingtam as agent of the 
Union in 1829 soon after his ordination to the 
diaconate and immediately set out on a long trip 
through the interior of New York state. His 
diary reads like a romance, though dealing with 
such prosaic matters as selling Sunday-school 
books, getting subscribers for the periodicals, 
appointing agents for the Union's publications 
and collecting money for the Sunday-school 
cause. He found the Church in that section 
everywhere scantily membered and still lan- 
guishing from the earlier causes of disintegra- 
tion. In many places a few ladies were teach- 
ing the children the catechism from ancient and 
well-worn Prayer Books. This was about all 
there was that savored of the Church. 

To these the stout-hearted agent brought great 
encouragement and nerved them to larger effort. 
In other towns he himself gathered a few chil- 
dren at the home of a devoted, though often 
discouraged churchman and started what soon 
afterward became a flourishing parish organiza- 
tion. Alternately in the saddle and stage-coach 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 127 

between seasons of illness, brought on by expos- 
ure and Hardship on the road, he succeeded in 
quickening into life smouldering sparks of the 
Church's activity, which subsequently burned 
their way with steady influence into the hearts 
of the communities forming their environment. 

Returning, he tells us of the great object of 
the Union, for which he constantly labored : "It 
has been my endeavor to state distinctly that all 
its plans and efforts are to have a direct bearing 
on the spiritual and religious interests of the 
young, rather than on their literary improve- 
ment. I have been more careful to do this from 
having noticed the low views of Sunday-school 
instruction entertained by no small number of 
people." 

Undeterred by his physical weakness, he 
again started out, and this time through the 
South. Here he found much greater interest in 
Church and Sunday-schools in the outlying sec- 
tions, especially of the Carolinas, though the 
lack of clergy and church-buildings hampered 
the progress badly. An interesting item in his 
diary, which preceded an account of a day's trip 
of some thirty or forty miles in a row boat down 
the Roanoke River, across the Albemarle Sound, 
tells of a journey of three days to Camden, S. 
C, where on a Sunday he preached four times 
in the court house, there being neither clergy- 



128 The Sunday-School. 

man nor church in that thriving town for the 
fairly numerous church-people. 

Evolutionary Progress in the Sunday-School 

of 1835. At the close of the first decade of the 
Union's existence the Sunday-schools still 
showed many evidences of the evolutionary pro- 
cess by which it came to he what it is. But in 
very few cases was it any longer a purely charit- 
able institution. The children of many of the 
best families, even in conservative parishes, like 
Christ Church, Philadelphia, attended regu- 
larly; while under Whittingham/s stirring 
exhortation others were warmly urged to attend. 

Place of Assembly Changes. The place of 
meeting was gradually changing. The church- 
galleries no longer monopolized the hum of the 
reciting children. Many parishes now provided 
separate buildings, well appointed and equipped, 
and many more were beginning to gather funds 
to build such buildings. Those which did not 
look forward to the erection of a parish-house 
fitted up separate rooms in the church-cellars or 
basements. And all this indicates not merely 
the progress of the Sunday-school movement, but 
it eloquently manifests, also, the advance of the 
Church. The pews in the galleries as well as on 
the main floors were being rented by communi- 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 129 

cants in the growing congregations, who did not 
want their prayer-books and hymnals and other 
pew-fnrnishings nsed or abused by the restless 
children. 

Internal Management and Routine Perfect- 
ed. The internal organization of the Sunday- 
schools was being perfected. The early division 
into two parts on the basis of sex was disappear- 
ing. Various departments were beginning to 
show lines of cleavage. The infant school first 
branched off. To maintain the economy of 
space, which was limited, the division by sex 
had to be modified. Boys and girls were seated 
on opposite sides of the same room. Adult 
classes were next detached and were satisfac- 
torily accommodated in the churches. 

The management of the school also was 
destined to undergo a process of change. The 
parochial Sunday-school society proved to be an 
unfortunate selection, whose survival, it was 
soon seen, would work untoward results in 
parochial affairs. In some places it was 
quickly dissolved and its duties concentrated in 
the persons of the clergy or the superintendent. 
The latter usually undertook all and was left to 
work out the usefulness of his schools in com- 
pany with the teachers — not from any lack of 
appreciation on the part of the clergy for the 



130 TheDSunday-School. 

benefits of Sunday-school work. But the schools 
had evolved much new material for the Church 
and the clergy were greatly pushed in taking 
care of these accessions. ' 

The strenuous routine with its long hours and 
exhausting duties was changing, too. In most 
of the schools, however, up to 1835, it was still 
a fact that the children were in session four 
hours on Sundays and in church at least three 
hours. Yet the trend was toward one session 
and shorter hours. 

The methods and materials of instruction dur- 
ing the first decade will be described in detail 
in another chapter, but it must be remarked in 
passing that both mirrored a high state of organ- 
ization, in which appeared careful planning in 
the minutest details. The teachers of that per- 
iod were many of them drawn from the best 
families of the nation and entered upon the work 
with serious interest and deep devotion to the 
cause of saving souls. They brought to the work 
social and intellectual attainments, the unsel- 
fish exercise of which made the Sunday-school 
equal, if not superior to the best of the day- 
schools in point of practical management. 2 They 
added to the routine work of instruction the 

2 Third Report of the Philadelphia Sunday and 
Adult Society, p. 72. "A number of our state legisla- 
tures are expending annually many thousands of dollars 



Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union. 131 

beneficent influence of personality, touched by 
a Saviour's love for man, and hence were stimu- 
lated by a real love for their scholars which the 
ordinary day-school teacher could not feel. For 
that reason the Sunday-school was, as it always 
has been more or less, a real power in the cure 
of souls committed to the care of the parish 
clergy. 

Statistics. The statistics of early Sunday- 
schools are very incomplete, like those of other 
Church agencies of that period. In 1835 there 
were about fifty thousand scholars, under some 
five thousand teachers, in the nineteen dioceses 
of the Republic, making the Sunday-school roll 
much larger than the communicant list of the 
Church. The twenty-eight depositories or book- 
stores connected with the Union were spread 
over the entire country, making it convenient for 
all sections to obtain its literature. About half 
a million copies of the Union's publications 
were sold during the three years ending with 
1835, which indicates wide-spread interest in 
the Church and more than nominal loyalty to 
her representative organization. 

on primary schools, that is, on schools for the poor, and 
yet their liberal appropriations do not accomplish bene- 
fits nearly equal to those conferred by Sunday-schools." 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE PLACE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL IN CHURCH 
HISTOEY PRIOR TO 1835. 

Movements Not Yet Fully Understood. It 

has been hinted in the previous chapters that 
the Sunday-school had a great deal to do with 
the Church's maintenance and progress in the 
first half of the nineteenth century. A few facts 
gathered from Sunday-school sources will more 
clearly illustrate what part the institution 
played in the Church's upbuilding, and will also 
serve to throw light on many facts underlying 
various movements in the Church — movements 
whose beginnings are still somewhat in the dark 
and whose aims and purposes are not generally 
understood. 

Darkest Period of the Church's Career. The 

gloomiest and most hopeless period of the Pro- 
testant Episcopal Church in the United States 
132 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 133 

of America was that which culminated in the 
War of 1812. The Committee on the State of 
the Church despondently reported to the Gen- 
eral Convention of 1811 that the number of 
churches in New Hampshire had not increased ; 
that in some parts of Massachusetts it was 
greatly to be lamented that the churches were in 
a state of derangement and decay; that the con- 
gregations in New Jersey were not numerous, 
though a ray of hope came from the fact that 
they were orderly and attentive ; that the Penn- 
sylvania Diocesan Conventions were very par- 
tially attended; that the Church in Maryland 
was still in a deplorable condition, with the hope 
of rehabilitation almost gone; that the Church 
in Virginia was feared to be so depressed as to 
be in danger of total ruin. Only in a few places 
in the nation was she holding her own. Evi- 
dences of progress at that time were few and 
very doubtful. 

Discouragement of Early Leaders. She was 

in the throes of what may be called the crisis 
of a malignant complication, into which were 
blended the results of two centuries of religious 
indifference and moral torpitude, and the reac- 
tionary effects of the more recent break with the 
mother-country. Hampered in every direction, 
uncertain which way to turn, no wonder the 



134 The Sunday-School. 

utterances of the leaders in that period took on 
a despairing tone. 

Astonishing Changes in Less Than a Gene- 
ration. Yet in less than a generation after- 
ward astonishing changes had been wrought out 
in every phase of her life. Everywhere were 
seen manifold evidences of splendid growth. 
The inspiring testimony of teeming member- 
ship and greater power begot larger ideas of 
future usefulness and visions of larger dignity 
in the body politic. In 1835 the leaders were 
already planning aggressive movements that 
manifested the confident assumption of the 
claim for the Church to pose as a national 
Church. 

Boldness of Leaders in Vaunting the 
Church's Catholicity. And more than this, 
her leaders were beginning to vaunt the 
Church's catholicity in terms that sharply con- 
trasted with the circumlocution with which the 
theme was approached in the earlier period. 
Not only was the claim to national influence on 
the lips of her leaders, but the traditional right 
to her share in the hegemony of the world's life 
and progress was claimed in all seriousness and 
much discussed. 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 135 

Properly Ascribed to the Development of 
Sunday-School Activities. Before the War of 
1812 such claims would have been ridiculed and 
rudely resented by the great majority of Amer- 
icans. What, therefore, was the secret of this 
extraordinary change of base ? It is evident 
that in the intervening quarter of a century the 
Church had gone through a period of evolution 
throughout which the primary educational 
forces had played a prominent part. We may 
safely read the answer to the question in Con- 
necticut's report to the Committee on the State 
of the Church, presented at the General Con- 
vention of 1835 : "The present measure of pros- 
perity in this diocese is to be ascribed under 
God to the increasing diligence of the clergy in 
seeking through the establishment of Bible 
classes, weekly lectures and a thorough system 
of Sunday-school instruction to establish, 
strengthen and settle the people of this diocese." 

Neglect of Children and Other Defects in 
the Early Years of Reconstruction. What the 
diocese of Connecticut witnessed was the almost 
universal testimony of the other dioceses in the 
United States. For half a dozen generations 
the children had been spiritually neglected and 
almost wholly untaught. The Bible had been a 
closed book. The future, which always lies with 



136 The Sunday-School. 

the rising generations in the process of their 
development, had been left to take care of itself. 
The Church had maintained an outward form 
of growth by building from the top downward, 
instead of from the foundation upward. As a 
result, when the storm came the structure rest- 
ing upon very unstable ground tottered and 
foreboded ruin. During the thirty years 
between the two revolutionary wars the leaders 
were not able to follow the guidance of Bishop 
White, who saw at once the need of striking at 
the foundations to strengthen them. They 
sought to support the swaying parts with the 
means at their command, waiting for the Meth- 
odists and other separatists to return to the fold. 
The outlook, naturally, was gloomiest toward the 
close of this period of weary, fruitless waiting. 
Naturally, too, the real revival of the Church's 
forces began when the campaign of elementary 
education, radically and fundamentally fortify- 
ing her structure, was well under way. 

Evidences of the Benefits of Sunday-School 
Activity in New England. The part played in 
the Church's resuscitation by the Sunday-school 
was productive of the best and most manifest 
results, perhaps, in New England. While first 
introduced in Philadelphia, it was in New Eng- 
land that the institution quickly received its 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 137 

highest and most effective development. Like 
all institutions for learning it appealed to the 
educational instincts of New Englanders — 
always very keen. Some of the hard and fast 
Puritans, indeed, continued to execrate its prin- 
ciples and to throw scorn upon its antecedents. 
But the Church's leaders realized their oppor- 
tunity and made it a most effective weapon in 
the struggle to restore her broken prestige. 

Alonzo Potter's Career. The stirring activ- 
ity of Christ Church, Boston, was widely felt 
and proved a powerful incentive to other New 
England parishes. But the effects of the renew- 
ing forces are better traced from the labors of 
Alonzo Potter and George W. Doane at the 
eastern metropolis. 

His Call to the Ministry of the Church. 

Potter's call to the ministry of the Church has 
already been mentioned. It was connected with 
the earliest American Church Sunday-school in 
that mysterious way in which the Spirit of God 
interweaves variously dimensioned effects into 
the warp and woof of causes, small and great. 
Soon after his confirmation at Christ Church, 
Philadelphia, he went back to his alma mater 
as Professor of Mathematics. True to his 
Quaker breeding, his first care was to start a 



138 The Sunday-School. 

Sunday-school for the blacks at St. George's, 
Schenectady. 

Sunday-School Enterprise at St. Paul's, Bos- 
ton. In 1826 he was called to St. Paul's, Bos- 
ton, and arrived just in time to see the seeds 
planted by Eaton and the other leaders of the 
previous decade unfolding and the blossoms 
beginning to set. He at once introduced the 
system of Sunday-school organization, which 
became famous for its thoroughness and effi- 
ciency, and in which "it was not found necessary 
to pay any attention to the accidental distinc- 
tions of society," the rich and poor assembling 
together in the schools. 

State of Religious Life in the New England 
Metropolis. St. Paul's at that time was the 
storm-center of the religious life in Eastern New 
England. The Unitarian outburst, which had 
started at the middle of the former century, was 
on the ebb. As has been mentioned, the Unitar- 
ians had fathered the Sunday-school movement 
in spite of Puritan opposition. But in their 
hands the institution had become a means of 
moral, rather than religious instruction. Trin- 
ity Church, then, was somewhat irreverently 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 139 

styled the "center of Tory old-fogy ism and 
ecclesiastical traditionalism" — a condition 
somewhat at variance with the more recent 
vogue of the parish. Christ Chnrch was already 
a down-town parish, too far from the Common 
on which St. Paul's fronted and toward which 
the resident population was converging. 2 Pot- 
ter, therefore, came at a critical time with 
peculiar opportunities and he made use of all 
with keen sagacity and sturdy manhood in the 
broadly conceived campaign of education he 
undertook, in which the Sunday-school was for 
the first time made the foundation of the work. 

Ideals of Sunday-School Work. His exper- 
ience in the chair of Mathematics at Union Col- 
lege, during which he had published text-books 
on Logarithms and Descriptive Geometry, pecu- 
liarly fitted him for the task of presenting the 
Church's principles with exact definition and 
clear reasoning. It is to be borne in mind that 
the early New England Sunday-school was on 
a higher plane than that on which the institu- 
tion is in more recent times generally main- 
tained. It was much more than a mere parish- 
appendage. It was the parish in the widest and 
best sense of the term. Not only were the ves- 
try its administrators, but most of the active 

2 Memoirs of the E.t. Rev. Alonzo 1'otter, p. 25. 



140 The Sunday-School. 

parishioners were either workers or pupils. It 
was the parish at instruction, as the church ser- 
vice was the parish at worship. 

General Results of Potter's Activity Potter 
labored hard to develop and maintain these high 
ideals. As rector he was at all times in close 
personal touch with teachers and scholars, young 
and old. It is reported that his teachers pre- 
pared themselves for their teaching with almost 
as great diligence as he, carrying to their classes 
written questions and answers as expounded and 
outlined by him in his week-day lectures on the 
lessons of the schools. It was a campaign of 
peculiar attractiveness to the Bostonians. Large 
numbers flocked to St. Paul's, alienated by the 
worn-out threatenings of an over-ripe Calvan- 
ism on the one hand and the vague generalities 
of an unfinished Unitarianism on the other. 
Sturdily fought out on these lines in various 
sections of New England it very materially 
helped the Church to regain her prestige in the 
eastern dioceses. 

George W. Doane at Trinity Church, Bos- 
ton. Doane entered the field in 1828, coming to 
Trinity Church as assistant minister. It did 
not take him long to see the strategic importance 
of the Sunday-school work. In his report of 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 141 

1831 to the General Union he remarked that 
when he came to the parish he asked for and 
assumed the entire superintendence of the 
schools. They were to be his chief responsibil- 
ity and to them he devoted his best powers. He 
believed "the advantage of the Sunday-schools 
as a means of most interesting and profitable 
communication between the minister, people 
and children — a three-fold cord — to be of incal- 
culable value to religion and the Church." 3 

Qualifications for Instructing the Young and 
Methods. Like Potter, Doane came splendidly 
fitted for the task of teaching from a college pro- 
fessorship, and by his brilliant scholarship and 
pedagogic efficiency soon made his school 
famous. Some of the methods he introduced 
were novel and peculiarly effective. Such, for 
example, was the custom of gathering the chil- 
dren about the chancel of the church, grouping 
them with dramatic effect and having them 
recite in concert sections of a harmony of the 
Gospels. "Designing to attempt several such 
improvements in the details of his school, he 
was thankful to God for the great good to the 
Church thus accomplished." 

3 Fifth Annual Report of Trinity Church School to 
the General S. S. Union, p. 34. 



142 The Sunday-School. 

Early Enthusiasm and Success. Many other 
facts show that at this time Doane was decidedly 
a Sunday-school enthusiast of an advanced char- 
acter. In a sermon preached during his career 
at Boston — a discourse replete with choice spec- 
imens of graceful diction and brilliant rhetoric 
— he said : "I maintain in terms unqualified the 
entire worthiness of the Sunday-school enter- 
prise to engage the wisdom of the wisest, the 
devotion of the most distinguished, the interest, 
affections and efforts of all who love the Lord 
Jesus Christ in sincerity." "It will reflect on 
him who does it with a Christian spirit a lustre, 
in the blaze of which all crowns and diadems 
on earth shall pale their effectual fire." "The 
Sacred Day so spent is doubly hallowed. It was 
the day on which the Saviour chiefly taught and 
healed. The Sunday-school teacher emulates 
His merciful example. He would make the 
Sabbath doubly blest." 4 The early evangelical 
teacher, who in the pitch of enthusiasm had 
picked up a half dozen ragged, blaspheming 
urchins and had dragged them to Sunday-school, 
feeling that he was to be instrumental in mak- 
ing the heavens ring with the plaudits of the 
angels over the conversion of these youthful chil- 
dren of Satan, could hardly have used more 

'Sermon preached in St. Paul's Chapel, New York, 
June 26, 1831. 



ThelSunday-School in Church History. 143 

brightly colored euphuism than that! Natur- 
ally, under such lively methods the cobwebs 
were nicked off from the spiritual recesses of 
quaint, gambrel-roofed old Trinity. Much of 
the prejudice against the Church vanished 
before such plain, straightforward teaching of 
her fundamental verities. The staid old parish 
became again a great center of influence in Bos- 
ton. Doane followed up his successes with 
much energy and was soon (1832) elevated to 
the episcopate of New Jersey. 

The work of the two young men from the 
Middle States in the Eastern metropolis was 
long remembered. The tide in the affairs of 
the Church was by them "taken at the flood," 
and led on not only to their own preferment, 
but to the renewing of the Church's activities 
and the promotion of her leadership in the 
spread of Christ's kingdom. 

The Evangelical Leaders of Philadelphia. 

If the indebtedness of the Church to the Sun- 
day-school is most clearly exemplified in degree 
by her progress in New England, the character 
of the institution's work is best set forth by the 
activity of the so-called evangelical leaders of 
Philadelphia. 

Dryness of Catechizing and Lack of Vital 
Piety in the Colonies. As has been intimated, 



144 The Sunday-School. 

the most serious ailment of the Church in pre- 
revolutionary years had been spiritual deadness, 
— a lack of the living fire of personal religion. 
It was mainly the consciousness of this that 
called forth the "prophetic ardor of John Wes- 
ley" and others, whose followers later on left 
the Church, discouraged because of her inertia 
in this regard. For years whatever teaching had 
emanated from the clergy of the colonies in gen- 
eral had been ponderously conventional. This 
was especially true of that directed at the chil- 
dren. They were fed on the catechism and dry 
treatises on that compendium of the Church's 
"instruction to be learned by every person before 
he be brought to be confirmed by the bishop" 
— husks with practically no refreshing, inspir- 
ing touches of the Saviour's example as gleaned 
from the Gospels. ~No wonder the vitally impor- 
tant task of energizing spiritually the rising 
generations proved dolefully fruitless and fell 
into disuse. 5 

Hopefulness of the Evangelical Leaders. 

But the hopelessness of arousing "vital piety," 
with the lack of which the Methodists taunted 
the Church, was not felt by the evangelical 
leaders. They remained within her fold and by 
their Sunday-school activity indicated what 

5 Yale Lectures, p. 87f. 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 145 

great things might have been spiritually accom- 
plished had no schism occurred. Chief among 
them were Joseph Pilmore, Benjamin Allen, 
Stephen H. Tyng and Gregory T. Bedell. 

Emotional Fervor. While the actual begin- 
ning of Sunday-schools in America is to be 
credited to the clergy and laity of Christ 
Church, Philadelphia, the tremendous energy 
of the evangelicals soon pushed their enterprises 
far in advance of all others. Unhampered at 
the outset by the Puritan misgivings as to the 
legality of Sunday-schooling, the former moved 
more slowly by reason of their native conserva- 
tism. On the other hand the strenuous individ- 
ualism of the latter enabled them to adapt them- 
selves more readily to the social and economic 
conditions of the time. And the emotional fer- 
vor peculiar to their profession of the faith 
quickly communicated itself in all directions. 
Many of the strongest parishes in Philadelphia 
arose from the seed sown by these devoted men, 
and from these parishes radiated an immense 
amount of general missionary enterprise, which 
gave great impetus to the Church at large dur- 
ing the years of early and later growth. 

Pilmore's Love of the Church. Pihnore, 
who had been one of the Wesley an leaders in the 



146 The Sunday-School. 

South, but who had renewed his allegiance to 
the Church when the separation came, saw the 
earliest Sunday-school work develop into won- 
derful proportions at his parish of old St. 
Paul's. He loved the Church and readily fol- 
lowed Bishop White's earnest admonitions to so 
carry on that work that her traditions might not 
be emasculated, but that she might be strength- 
ened in her peculiar ways and fitted for greater 
activity. Pilmore was, indeed, the guiding 
spirit in the organization of the Philadelphia 
Sunday and Adult Society, which united all the 
religious bodies for a time. But he was also a 
very active and influential manager of the 
Church society of the same name. The intense 
missionary activity of his male Sunday-school 
and the many-sided institutional enterprise of 
his female school were powerful leavening 
agents, that helped arouse the Church in Phila- 
delphia from her early lethargic conservatism, 
in which she might have gone to seed. 

Allen's Catholicity. Allen, Pilmore's suc- 
cessor at St. Paul's, came to Philadelphia in 
1822 from Virginia, where he had done excel- 
lent work for the Church in the saddle, distrib- 
uting among the people of the country districts 
prayer books, Sunday-school volumes and other 
literature. He warmly supported the American 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 147 

Sunday-School Union. Yet he had a profound 
reverence for the Church's traditions. At heart 
he was not fully satisfied with the results of 
Sunday-schools. He was one of the first in that 
period to revive the ancient catechetical lectures 
for children of Church parents. These were 
held distinct from the Sunday-schools and in 
them he followed the traditional leanings of 
John Wesley and placed himself side by side 
with certain men in the Church of England 
under whose leadership the Tractarian move- 
ment was afterward inaugurated. Allen's large 
sympathy for the Church brought a measure of 
prosperity to her diocesan and general institu- 
tions, especially the General Sunday-School 
Union, in which, too, he was warmly interested. 

Tyng's Early Career as a Sunday-School En- 
thusiast. Tyng came to St. Paul's in 1829. Of 
New England parentage, he inherited the high 
educational ideals of his forefathers. In 1819 
during his diaconate under Bishop Griswold, 
he established the first Sunday-school known in 
Quincy, Massachusetts. On his accession to the 
rectorship of St. Paul's his attention was at 
once drawn to the wonderful activity of the 
schools. He found a a very effective manage- 
ment in both sexes, from adult Bible classes 
down to the infant-schools. The best and most 



148 The Sunday-School. 

intelligent members of the church were engaged 
in them. Many of the most influential officers 
of the parish were also occupied in them." They 
made the very field of labor for which he had 
longed, and in it he ardently strove to realize 
and advance the ideals of his predecessors. 

Tyng's Later Achievements. Called to the 
newly founded Church of the Epiphany in 1834 
he applied the same love for the primary work 
of the parish with the same sense of its par- 
amount importance. "The new church/' he 
wrote, "was founded upon the Sunday-school." 
"We founded this parish with the distinct 
understanding and plan, that the Sunday-school 
should be the prominent object of our regard, 
and we carried out this principle completely." 
It is to be added, furthermore, that similar lan- 
guage was used in connection with his inaugura- 
tion of the work at new St. George's, New York 
City, later on. 

Bedell's Wonderful Sunday-School Enter- 
prises at St. Andrew's Philadelphia. Bedell 
was called to Philadelphia at Allen's instance to 
begin the establishment of the newly formed 
parish of St. Andrew's. In Tyng's opinion no 
clergyman in the United States of any denom- 
ination paid more attention to the establishment 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 149 

and instruction of the Sunday-schools, or has 
been more successful in sustaining their useful- 
ness and efficiency than he. And the records of 
Bedell's labors eminently justify this opinion. 
The Sunday educational work at St. Andrew's, 
with its various accessories, was long the most 
important and fruitful in the United States. 

Lofty Conception of the Sunday-School's 
Place. And Bedell was actuated by a lofty con- 
ception of the part played by the Sunday-school 
in Church history. At the celebration of his 
tenth anniversary in Philadelphia he uttered 
these words : "Within the last twenty-five years 
an entirely new class of causes have been 
brought into operation, upon which the pros- 
perity of churches is made very materially to 
depend. Among them there is none so prom- 
inent as that which may be called the Sunday- 
school enterprise. However it may have come 
to pass, it is nevertheless certain that with the 
success of the Sunday-school operations of the 
Church her spiritual welfare is indissolubly 
connected. This is a matter of experience which 
is paramount to all theories." Bedell, like all 
the evangelical leaders, did much to enhance the 
success of the Protestant Episcopal Sunday and 
Adult Society. When the General Union was 
incorporated, they were loyal to its interests and 



150 The Sunday-School. 

labored earnestly to facilitate its progress. But 
it could not supply the needs of the very large 
schools they captained and they were forced to 
draw upon other available sources of supply, 
like the American Sunday-School Union. 

Devout Personal Relationship Between 
Teacher and Scholar the Secret of the Suc- 
cess Obtained. The Sunday-school labors of 
all the early evangelical leaders were astonish- 
ingly varied and of manifold usefulness. Twen- 
tieth century churchmen are apt to think that 
the day of institutional work in the churches is 
just beginning to dawn. Yet the present-day 
institutional organizer might learn much from 
Bedell's Sunday-school at St. Andrew's. It is 
to be remembered, too, that the devotional 
always had the most prominent place in this 
institutional work. In the various kinds of 
religious and charitable gatherings the closest 
soul-to-soul intercourse prevailed between per- 
sons who were often at a wide distance from 
each other socially. There was keen inspiration 
and great benefit in this to both parties, while 
the stress of spirituality was maintained. The 
influence of this personal relationship had 
powerful effect, particularly upon the children 
of the lowly. Debased by the degrading par- 
ental relationship, which in those days was 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 151 

often illegitimate, and by example full of temp- 
tation to intemperance and other immorality, 
the children found in the Sunday-school work- 
ers, wholesome, sympathetic guides, who loved 
to call themselves "elder brothers" or "elder 
sisters," and who supplied what was lacking 
and counteracted what was degrading in the 
examples of their natural relatives. This per- 
sonal relationship all teachers, but especially 
the evangelical leaders, sought to make more 
than a name. And there is no doubt that it was 
a powerful factor — the most powerful, perhaps, 
— in changing the social conditions of the time. 

New York Deeply Moved by the Fervor of 
Early Sunday-School Leaders. Evidences of 
this devotional fervor outside the enterprises of 
the evangelical leaders, in which it glowed so 
warmly, were to be seen in the frequent refer- 
ences to so-called experimental religion, made 
even by those whose ecclesiastical leanings were 
stigmatized as evoking more interest in the out- 
ward form than the inward spirit of religious 
endeavor. 

State of Religion in the Metropolis Before 
1812. The wave of devotional enthusiasm 
deeply affected the Church in New York and the 
effects of the Sunday-school movement showed 



152 The Sunday-School. 

themselves immediately and prominently in the 
increased observance of the Church's ordinances 
in general. 

In the maintenance of such observance New 
York, perhaps, had been especially derelict. But 
now reports to the General Sunday-School 
Union from all sections of the city and state 
told of the large and increasing numbers of per- 
sons baptized, confirmed, partaking of the Holy 
Communion and manifesting unusual interest 
in the services and other offices. The various 
Sunday-schools formed convenient practical 
bases on which to work out such salutary 
changes. Many a rector through Sunday-school 
sources learned for the first time what children 
in his parochial sphere of influence were unbap- 
tized. He then administered the sacrament to 
all, sometimes in a body at one service, and 
sometimes in squads on several occasions. 6 

Sunday-School at the General Seminary. 

An important fact to be mentioned in this con- 
nection is the establishment of a large Sunday- 
school in connection with the General Seminary 
in 1828. This called forth "expressions of 
highest satisfaction on the part of churchmen, 
because it tended to the general diffusion of 

fourteenth Annual Report of the N. Y. P. E. S. S. 
Society p. 18. 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 153 

faith and piety cultivated in the seminary and 
to the improvement of future pastors of the 
Church in one of the most important and effi- 
cient branches of pastoral labor. " Its signifi- 
cance may be appreciated, when it is remem- 
bered that a student's work in the Sunday-school 
of that period occupied him closely during the 
whole Sunday. Evidently the Sunday-school 
was regarded (like a hospital in connection with 
the medical school) as an epitome of the 
Church's missionary work and a necessary train- 
ing ground for the practical work of the min- 
istry. 7 

Late in life Whittingham wrote that in the 
work of the General Sunday School Union "the 
mild wisdom of a White, the sagacity and zeal- 
ous energy of a Hobart ; the pure simplicity of 
a Gr is wold and the overflowing love of a Chan- 
ning Moore united." 8 It was a true and accu- 
rate estimate of the characters and peculiar ser- 
vices of these generals of the early Church in 
America. 

Bishop Hobart as a Sunday-School Enthu- 
siast. In all the progressive activity inspired 
by the Sunday-school movement the wonderful 

7 Second Annual Report of the General S. S. Union, 
p. 4. 

"Sermon at the quarter centennial anniversary of 
the General S. S. Union in 1851. 



154 The Sunday-School 

directive genius of Bishop Hobart was every- 
where in evidence. It will be impossible to form 
a true conception of his achievements for the 
Church without a thorough study of the work 
of the Union. His demise in 1831 came when 
the fruits of his sagacity and zealous energy 
were just beginning to ripen. A glimpse at the 
true character of the man may be had, when it 
is remembered that one of his last cares was 
the selection of a library for the colored Sun- 
day-school of St. Philip's Church, New York 
City. 9 ~No sentence is a worthier epitaph than 
the following, taken from a memorial, which 
was adopted at a great mass-meeting of the 
Sunday-schools of the metropolis : "Amongst the 
numerous and striking traits of character which 
distinguished this great and good prelate, espe- 
cially interesting is the affectionate spirit with 
which he ever regarded the young, and the assid- 
uity with which he obeyed the injunction, Teed 
My Lambs.' He was, indeed, a good shepherd." 10 

Progress in New Jersey Under Bishop 
Doane. In Maryland Under Bishop Whitting- 
ham. In Delaware. Bishop Doane after his 
consecration to the episcopate of New Jersey 
began his new career by manifesting the same 

•Fourteenth Annual Report of the N. Y. P. E. S. S. 
Society, p. 17. 
10 Ibid\, p. 23, 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 155 

enthusiasm for the Sunday-schools that had 
made his ministry in Boston so successful. In 
his address to the diocesan convention of 1834 
he said : "Of the great benefits which have been 
derived and which may be expected from the 
excellent institution I do not entertain and 
would not intimate a doubt. " Maryland, whose 
Sunday-schools had from the first shown great 
activity, in 1840 chose Whittingham to be its 
bishop and his preferment did not diminish his 
ardor for the institution's work. Delaware, 
which had taken up the Sunday-school in very 
early days — some of the denominational 
schools dating back to 1814 — depended on 
Bishop White for episcopal ministrations and 
often upon the clergy of Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania for other offices. In this position of 
dependence the Sunday-school was of immense 
help, cementing the scattered fragments of the 
Church's life and forming a firm foundation 
upon which the diocese afterward was enabled 
to build with effect. 

Development in the South. In the South 
the Sunday-schools did their part in restoring 
the Church on the ruins of the revolutionary 
period. In Virginia, owing to the corporate 
weakness of the Church, they were at first, as 
a general rule, connected with the interdenom- 



156 



The Sunday-School. 



inational unions. One by one, however, they 
affiliated themselves with the General Union, 
and, receiving from it support and material for 
propagating the Church's doctrines, they did 
much to infuse life into the decayed parishes of 
the diocese. In South Carolina, where the 
Church displayed the greatest vitality, the 
strong central Sunday-school society of Charles- 
ton was a significant factor in the great prosper- 
ity that quickly came to the diocese. 



Causes of the Church's Debility in the South- 
ern Dioceses. The depleted state of the South- 
ern dioceses w r as not due to a general neglect of 
the Church's practices, nor to the disuse of her 
offices. The trouble was that in the use of these 
offices corrupt practices obtained, which devital- 
ized the Church more than in sections like ISTew 
York, where for a time the offices were generally 
neglected. For example, the report of Vir- 
ginia to the General Convention of 1820 men- 
tions the fact that the sacrament of baptism, 
especially, "hitherto lightly or prophanely per- 
formed," began to excite the more serious atten- 
tion of the clergy and laity. Whereas the direc- 
tions of the rubric enjoined the most public and 
solemn performance of it, it had been too cus- 
tomary to prevail upon the ministers to disobey 
the rubric and let down the ordinance to a mere 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 157 

private ceremony, which was often accompanied 
with unbecoming frivolity and mirth, as well as 
with more serious excesses. The impiety of 
such a proceeding now appeared in its true colors 
and a reformation had begun. The truth is that 
the evangelical outburst behind the Sunday- 
school movement had raised the religious devel- 
opment of the young to its proper plane of dig- 
nity, and any sin against its wholesome per- 
formance came to be regarded as especially 
reprehensible. 

Example of Southern Gentlemen. Frequent 
mention was made at that time of the newly dis- 
played piety of Southern gentlemen, who now 
had children of their own in the Sunday-schools, 
and who had laudably devoted themselves to the 
office of teacher on the Lords day. 11 They did 
not now plead the necessary demand which their 
business made upon them during the week in 
order to use Sunday as a day of recreation or 
amusement. But their conduct now evidenced 
the belief that in improving the religious con- 
dition of the rising generation they were honor- 
ing God, advancing the moral interests of their 
country and affording an animating example to 
others to embark in the same holy cause. Such 

"Fourth Annual Report of the General S. S. Union, 
p. 71. 



158 The Sunday-School. 

was the Sunday-school's subtle, far-reaching 
stimulus to reaction against a long career of 
religious indifference and moral perverseness. 

This reaction in the South and in several other 
sections of the nation affected especially the 
well-to-do. It was publicly stated on many an 
occasion that the rich had less education than 
the poor after the first decade of Sunday-school 
enterprise — less, because the children of the 
well-to-do at first chose to disregard the newly 
established means of instruction. Their condi- 
tion was openly pitied, and with the reaction it 
became no longer a matter of indifference with 
the children of the rich whether or not they 
could read the Bible — or, for that matter, any 
other book. 

Progress of Sunday-Schools in the West. 

In the West Sunday-schools had everywhere 
laid the foundation for Church development and 
on these the Church was rapidly building strong 
centers of religious life. In 1832, Mcllvaine, 
who in New Jersey had been prominently iden- 
tified with some of the first Sunday-school work 
of the country, took command for the Church 
of the fruitful fields of Ohio and Michigan, as 
Bishop of Ohio. He warmly appealed for 
clergymen to go to "almost every village of Ohio 
to establish permanently the principles and 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 159 

usages of primitive Christianity" in congrega- 
tions, which had been gathered together mainly 
by Bishop Chase's zealous Sunday-school labor- 
ers. Chase, in 1835, moved out to Illinois and 
in his new diocese repeated with keen, sagacious 
foresight what he had undertaken in his former 
field. 12 Jackson Kemper, who had inaugurated 
the first Sunday-school of the Church in Phila- 
delphia, was sent out to Missouri and Indiana 
in 1835 as the Church's first missionary bishop, 
and true to his early ideals made the Sunday- 
school a prominent factor in sowing the seed 
that was to ripen on those frontier lines into the 
Church's harvests. 

Part Played by the Sunday-School as the 
Handmaid of the Church. It is evident from 
a study of all the forces at work that the Gen- 
eral Protestant Episcopal Sunday-School Union 
had fastened its influence deeply into the life of 
the Church. It was her seed-time and the 

"Journal of the General Convention of 1835 on the 
state of the Church in Illinois. "A gentleman is em- 
ployed as an agent to visit various towns in the state 
and to organize, wherever practicable, Episcopal Sunday 
schools which may by Divine blessing prepare the way 
for the future establishments of churches." 

In 1830 the American Sunday School_ Union adopted 
a plan to start a Sunday-school in every settlement in 
the Mississippi Valley and faithfully carried it out in 
two years. 



160 The Sunday-School. 

Union's activity everywhere was simply the 
sowing of the seed, whose fruits were to 
strengthen her and increase her usefulness. 
Nowhere up to 1835 was manifested the intima- 
tion, even, that here was an organization that 
might rival the Church. The Sunday-school 
was regarded simply as the Church in action 
in the seed-time of her career. There was no 
hint of a possible conflict between the leaders of 
the Sunday-school and those of the mother- 
organization. That came later on. The latter 
were in deed as well as in name the guiding 
spirits of the Sunday-school activity. 

The Only Successful Work in the Church 
up to 1835. And if this was but a phase of the 
Church's activity, it was the only successful 
work done by her during the first thirty-five 
years of the nineteenth century. The inactivity 
of the general Missionary Society by reason 
of its dual headship, often at variance with 
itself, was pathetic, the leaders in general being 
unable to settle upon any well- defined policy 
and the dioceses in union with the General Con- 
vention being loosely joined together. Nothing 
was done abroad by the Missionary Society 
before 1835 except the little educational enter- 
prise in Greece. And practically no general 
domestic missions were founded save a few 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 161 

Indian establishments on the frontiers, among 
which the school of Green Bay (then in 
the territory of Michigan), Wis., was not- 
able. The various dioceses had missionary 
societies, which were doing something for their 
own jurisdictions, but that work was sadly halt- 
ing. The diocesan missionary societies were 
acting as free lances in a sort of guerilla war- 
fare, whose very results manifested the helpless- 
ness of the Church as an organized body in this 
period of her career. 

Yet she was really not standing still, as most 
of her historians overlooking the significance of 
the Sunday-school enterprise have intimated. 
On the contrary, her standards were being ad- 
vanced with an enthusiasm, born of a mighty 
inspiration. In her Sunday-school work she 
was striking out in all directions. In the Gen- 
eral Sunday-School Union she displayed that 
coherence and elasticity that soon brought order 
out of chaos. In 1828 Bishop White wrote of 
the "most perfect unanimity of sentiment as to 
the right performance of the great duty com- 
mitted to the charge of the Sunday-school lead- 
ers, and the prospect of the great results in the 
moral and religious interests of the rising gen- 
eration to be achieved in the future operations 
of the Union." It was a unanimity direly 
needed in the Church at that time. Combined 



162 The Sunday-School. 

with an unction of spiritual enthusiasm and 
tireless, well-directed zeal, it wrought a revolu- 
tion in her methods. She no longer inanely 
waited for accessions from the separated bodies, 
but boldly pushed out into the highways and 
byways, "compelling them to come in." One 
of Bishop Hobart's last utterances was this: 
"Honored, thrice honored is this Union in being 
made an important instrument of so benign a 
result." 

Missionary Spirit of Sunday-School Classes. 

The intense missionary spirit that pervaded the 
Sunday-schools of that period was manifested 
in many features of their regular work. Most 
of them resolved themselves into organizations 
like Juvenile Missionary Societies and poured 
much money into the treasury of the Domestic 
and Foreign Society. A noteworthy instance of 
this missionary zeal is evidenced by an interest- 
ing feature in the routine, common to the early 
Church Sunday-schools. In these many of the 
classes bore what appeared to be the names of 
prominent bishops and others leaders in the 
Church. Thus St. James' Sunday-school of 
Philadelphia had a Jackson Kemper class and 
a Henry U. Onderdonk class, which were work- 
ing hard to raise money for the education of 
Indians at Green Bay. Now the persons indi- 



The Sunday-School in Church History. 163 

cated by these class-names were not the bishops, 
as might appear to the casual observer, but they 
were Indian children. Each class contributing 
a certain sum was allowed to name a little red- 
skin at his baptism and chose the name of the 
child thus designated, borrowing for him the 
name of a prominent Church leader. 13 Many a 
bishop had an Indian "double" in those days, 
and in this class designation lies excellent proof 
of the missionary power of the early Sunday- 
school. 

Change in the Church's Missionary Policy 
in 1835. Then, too, it was by way of the Sun- 
day-school that the true ideal of missionary 
endeavor first asserted itself in the Church. 
When Bishop Doane, at the General Conven- 
tion of 1835, proclaimed that every baptized 
person was in virtue of that baptism a mission- 
ary for Christ (thus fairly and officially stating 
the principle that inaugurated a new era in 
the Church's missionary enterprise), he was but 
standing on the ground already occupied by the 
General Sunday-School Union. He but echoed 
the ideas of the Sunday-school leaders presented 
at the triennial meeting of the Union in 1829 
and adopted at a similar gathering in connec- 
tion with the General Convention of 1832. 

"Fourth Annual Report of the General S. S. Union, 
p. 60. 



164 The Sunday-School. 

Both the Union and the Domestic and For- 
eign Missionary Society began their work on a 
commercial basis, which demanded the contri- 
bution of a certain amount of money as a pre- 
requisite to membership in the societies. This 
basis proved to be constraining and unworthy 
of the saving grace of a free Gospel. The Sun- 
day-school leaders quickly recognized the imped- 
ing influences of such a policy and soon pre- 
pared to put into action the larger policy of "the 
universal membership of the children of God." 
And in the train of this action the Church fol- 
lowed, verifying the prophetic utterance regard- 
ing the "leadership of the little child." 



CHAPTER VI. 

MOVEMENTS TOWARD CENTRALIZATION. 

What the Sunday-School Union Had Done 
for Individual Schools. The second decade of 
the General Union's history began with con- 
certed efforts towards the centralization of its 
various activities and their co-ordination with 
the other general agencies of the Church. For 
several years back this movement had been 
going on. The Union hitherto had been in 
touch mainly with individual schools all over 
the nation. It had powerfully stimulated indi- 
vidual effort in the cause, having led to the 
formation of nearly two-thirds of the Sunday- 
schools organized within the Church. By send- 
ing out its agents and by correspondence, it had 
aroused persons to begin schools in various 
places and when necessary had furnished money, 
books and other supplies to support them. 
165 



166 The Sunday-School. 

Formation of Auxiliary Diocesan Societies. 

But the care of individuals soon grew too great, 
and endeavor was made to establish auxiliary 
organizations in each of the dioceses, which were 
to look after the individual schools and account 
for them to the General Union. Three diocesan 
societies had already been in action, and these 
were drawn closer together as integral parts of 
the general organization. In 1833 the Phila- 
delphia Protestant Episcopal Sunday and Adult 
Society, which had been more or less an inde- 
pendent auxiliary, changed its name to Diocesan 
Sunday-School Society of Pennsylvania, adopt- 
ed a new constitution to conform with the 
other diocesan auxiliaries and transferred its 
book-business to the General Depository. Eleven 
of the nineteen dioceses then existing established 
similar societies, and the rest prepared to con- 
form to the movement towards centralizing and 
systematizing the general Sunday-school work. 

Church Versus Federal Idea in the Sunday- 
School Movement. It may be noted, in pass- 
ing, that the Sunday-school work was from the 
beginning characterized by a solidarity peculiar 
to its own establishment. Church historians 
have noted the fact that in the early organiza- 
tion of the American Church the federal idea 
prevailed. And it is true that in most of her 



Movements Toward Centralization. 167 

activities she appeared as a mere federation of 
state dioceses. This is particularly visible in 
the early agencies to promote missions and 
ordinary church-extension and to facilitate edu- 
cation for aspirants to the ministry. It is 
undoubtedly a fact that this idea prevailed to 
a large extent in the Church at large, almost up 
to 1835. The Sunday-school activities, how- 
ever, offer a notable exception. In them under 
the dominating influence of Bishop Hobart the 
development was from a strong center outward. 
In the Sunday-school movement the Church idea 
prevailed. 

First Effort at Centralization Touched Chris- 
tian Doctrine. The first of the efforts at cen- 
tralization touched the vital subject of Chris- 
tian doctrine. Though the early endeavors had 
largely been in the direction of establishing new 
schools and in extending the range of Sunday- 
school instruction, some effort had been made 
to consolidate and unify the various systems 
and methods of teaching in use in the different 
schools. The Union had an excellent and com- 
plete system of lessons, but this its authorities 
had never even urgently recommended to the 
schools generally. The utmost liberty had been 
conceded in the choice and application. No overt 
attempt to exert any positive influence, even in 



168 The Sunday-School. 

the direction of forcing a uniform system on 
the schools was to be seen anywhere. 

Begun by the Philadelphia Sunday-School 
Society In 1833, however, the closer organ- 
ization and the progressing ideals of centraliza- 
tion, keeping pace with the larger development 
of the Church idea, began to stimulate the 
desire for the enforcement of a more uniform 
system of teaching. As usual in most of the 
early general movements, the Philadelphia Sun- 
day-school society took the initiative and 
through the Rev. Dr. James Montgomery, 
Bishop White's son-in-law, presented a memo- 
rial to the General Union urging the formuli- 
zation of some plan "to secure unity of action 
throughout the Episcopal Church in the Sun- 
day-school cause." This met with general appro- 
bation and Bishop Doane secured the adoption 
of a resolution providing for the appointment 
of a committee "to consider how far a plan or 
system of instruction is practicable and expe- 
dient." 

Stronger and More Positive Church Teach- 
ing Aimed At. Uniformity was not the only 
thing aimed at. Publications of this period 
savoring of the influences of Oxford scholarship 
display the manifest trend toward stronger and 



Movements Toward Centralization. 169 

more positive Church teaching. And in this 
the leaders were conscious that they were "play- 
ing with fire/' that their advance demanded 
caution. Bishop Doane's committee, therefore, 
could come to no decision on the plan and the 
matter then went back to the Union's Executive 
Committee, which appointed James Milnor, 
Francis L. Hawks and Francis H. Cuming to 
deliberate and report at the triennial meeting 
in connection with the General Convention of 
1833. 

No General Plan of Enforcing Uniformity 
Recommended. These gentlemen, who for in- 
tellectual acumen and spiritual breadth were 
among the best fitted in the Church to judge 
the question, after long and careful scrutiny of 
the facts, reported that "the circumstances of 
schools are so infinitely various, it is believed no 
one system can be made acceptable to all; and 
the committee, therefore, have been led to the 
conclusion, that a very moderate degree of 
action on the part of the Board of Managers 
on this subject is at all expedient. There are, 
however, certain principles of universal appli- 
cation, which it is exceedingly important should 
pervade all our schools ; one of these is, that 
every school be understood to be under the pas- 
toral charge and supervision of the rector or 



170 The Sunday-School. 

minister of the parish ; another, that the instruc- 
tion imparted be exclusively of a religious char- 
acter and that the basis of such instruction be 
the Sacred Scriptures; and a third, that the 
Prayer Book, and especially the Catechism of 
the Church, be considered the standard inter- 
preters of the sacred volume. In regard to the 
explanations of the Church Catechism set forth 
by this society a great variety of opinion and 
practice are found in use ; so great, that it is best 
to leave to the sound discretion of the pastor of 
each church the time and manner of their intro- 
duction. Upon the whole, the committee are 
of the opinion that no general plan which would 
meet the views and wants of all our schools can 
be proposed, and, therefore, recommend that 
adhering to the principles suggested, each school 
adopt under the counsel and advice of the rector 
such a system of instruction as may be best 
adapted to its peculiar circumstances, using as 
far as practical the books published by the 
Union." 

Last Appearance of Bishop White. The 

meeting at which this was without objection 
adopted, it was chronicled, would long be 
remembered as the brightest epoch in the 
Church's Sunday-school history. 1 Then was 

Report of Gen. S. S. Union for 1838, p. 10. 






Movements Toward Centralization. 171 

present for the last time the "reverend patriarch 
of the Church," who, though with characteristic 
meekness refusing to be called by that name, 
nevertheless had it bestowed upon him by the 
whole Church. "And one more worthy of the 
honorable title the Church will acknowledge she 
has never known. He was present then, not only 
assisting by his counsels and wooing all to 
increased love of holy benevolence by its reflec- 
tion from his own saintly countenance and by 
proof of its influence upon him that has been 
accumulating during the whole of his life, but 
manifesting the interest he took in Sunday- 
school work by publicly announcing himself as 
its patron." Among the last cares of him, who 
was the "father of his Church as Washington 
was the father of his country," was the Sunday- 
school, which had been first among his cares 
after his consecration to the episcopate. 

Turning Point in the Church's Career. This 
meeting, including practically the General Con- 
vention of 1835, which proclaimed the new mis- 
sionary policy of the Church, displays the 
undercurrents in the Church's life more truth- 
fully than the more official gathering, at which 
these are apt to be suppressed. From the atti- 
tude and utterances of the leaders it was evi- 
dent all were impressed with the deep conscious- 



172 The Sunday-School. 

ness that this was a turning point in the 
Church's career ; that a new era of progress was 
opening. At such a time as this an ecclesiasti- 
cal body generally pauses to rearrange and 
restate its fundamentals, often amplifying and 
embellishing them with material that has mean- 
while developed. So our Church in her Sun- 
day-school propaganda used the opportunity to 
restate principles of teaching. The Scriptures 
were reaffirmed to be the basis of her doctrine 
and the Prayer Book was affirmed to be the 
standard of interpretation. It was this pro- 
mulgation that began the crystallization of the 
designation "Prayer Book Churchman." 

Prayer Book Churchmanship. It may seem 
amusing to the twentieth century Churchman 
that the Prayer Book should be set up as an 
authoritative interpreter for anything. In fact, 
the committee itself acknowledged there was 
great variety of opinion and practice in the use 
of the Catechism, so that the judgment in the 
end fell upon the sound discretion of the clergy 
as individuals. But in those days there were 
certain well-defined limits set by the Book of 
Common Prayer. There were some in that 
gathering who had been influential factors in 
the formative compilation and revision of the 
liturgy and the articles of religion. These had 




Movements Toward Centralization. 173 

prayerfully considered their tenets, line upon 
line, and the leaven of their understanding man- 
ifested itself in the spirit of the time. 

Broad Conception of Faith and Orders. But 

the chief importance of the report of the com- 
mittee at that triennial meeting of the General 
Sunday-School Union was not so much on the 
side of its circumscribing limitations as on that 
of its liberties. A careful study of the report 
shows that within certain limits the range of 
liberty was very large. The Church, in the 
Old Fashioned High Church Period, had a 
broad, wholesome conception of the faith and 
orders, upon which she based her doctrine and 
practice. 

Relation of Rectors to Their Sunday-Schools. 

Regarding the first of the "three principles of 
universal application' 7 to which the committee 
pointed as the substance of its report, it seems 
to have been necessary to clearly define the 
relation borne by the clergy to their parish 
Sunday-schools. Many a rector of that period, 
while acknowledging that the extent to which 
a parish had pushed the Sunday-school cause 
had become a kind of standard or test of the 
prosperity of the parish — the articulus stantis 
aid cadentis ecclesiae — could not, however, say 



174 The Sunday-School. 

he was satisfied with the organization of his 
school as it touched him. 2 

Passing of the Parochial Sunday-School So- 
cieties. It will be remembered that this was a 
transition period in the development of this 
phase of the institution. The government by an 
independent parish Sunday-school society, 
though being rapidly superseded by the simpler 
scheme of personal oversight by a superintend- 
ent or the rector, still remained in force in cer- 
tain sections of the country. 3 Such an organiza- 
tion was of great service in mission-fields, when 
the ordinary parish officers from the rector down 
were not in charge. But side by side with the 
regular means of parish government the irre- 
sponsible society unfortunately became the cen- 
ter of parish and even diocesan "politics," 
occasioning needless petty animosities. Bishop 
Doane in particular seems to have experienced 
much trouble in this way. It led him to fear 
lest the Sunday-school turn out to be a Frank- 
enstein creation, with as banefully destructive a 
tendency as it had been helpfully constructive. 
The movement towards centralization had as 
one of its aims the elimination of the parish 
Sunday-school society. In the establishment of 

2 The Protestant Episcopalian, for September, 1835. 
3 Gen. S. S. Union Report for 1839. 



Movements Toward Centralization. 175 

strong diocesan societies with large, well-stocked 
depositories, the parish society, whose chief 
function really was the provision of supplies, 
would practically be unnecessary. The latter, 
however, was not so easily eliminated, and after- 
ward, as will be seen, proved to be one of the 
causes of the General Union's undoing. 

Second Effort at Centralization Touched the 
Sunday-School Union as an Accredited General 
Church Institution. Another and perhaps the 
most prominent aim of the movement towards 
centralization was the official incorporation of 
the Union as an accredited General Institution 
of the Church. While it had acted and been tac- 
itly recognized as such from the beginning, it 
was that only in name. At the 1835 triennial 
meeting the Rev. George Boyd submitted a reso- 
lution instructing the Board of Managers to in- 
quire whether the operations of the Union ought 
not to be entrusted to a Board appointed by the 
General Convention, so that formal presentation 
of the matter might be made at the Convention 
of 1838. 

Third Movement Toward Centralization 
Touched the General Seminary. Meanwhile 
two other educational movements had been 
inaugurated within the Church, both of which 



176 The Sunday-School. 

fell more or less under the fostering influences 
of Sunday-school agencies. One concerned itself 
with the education of the ministry. Ever since 
1820 the Church had heen seriously grappling 
with this problem. The General Seminary had 
been established and after much travail been 
placed on stable footing. Its organization, like 
that of the Sunday-school and other institutions 
of the American Church, inaugurated a decided 
break with the traditions of the Church of Eng- 
land, which to this day has had no theological 
seminaries. The clergy of the mother-country 
pursued their divinity as well as secular train- 
ing at the open universities, which were gener- 
ally under the auspices of the Established 
Church. It may be added in passing that this 
fact was made the theme of frequent reproach 
against the Anglican ministry. It was hinted 
that the education for the sacred priesthood 
concerned itself chiefly with French literature 
of the lighter sort and with fox-hunting. In 
America there were, of course, no such universi- 
ties. What colleges were under Church 
auspices were still in "swaddling clothes." 
The immense strides made by the Church 
in the two decades following the War of 
1812 demanded at once peculiar and adequate 
means of training new clergymen. This 
demand was measurably satisfied by the action 



Movements Toward Centralization. 177 

of 1820, which, however, comprehended a series 
of divinity schools in various parts of the coun- 
try — a much larger scheme than the incorpora- 
tion of one seminary. 

How the Movement Concerned Sunday- 
School Endeavor. But a great problem still 
faced the Church after the happy establishment 
of the latter. The General Seminary provided 
the necessary education for young men who had 
advanced to a degree of learning and! culture suf- 
ficient to enable them with effect to take the 
finishing years of seminary training. How was 
she to get young men with that degree of cul- 
ture? Provision for the preliminary training 
seemed just as important as for the finishing 
touches. Here the question entered the field of 
Sunday-school activity. Many, if not most, of 
the candidates had received not only their call, 
but a large 'portion of their preliminary pre- 
paration at the Sunday-schools, so elaborate 
and varied were the courses of instruction then 
pursued in these ! 

General Education Society Planned. For 

some time the Church groped along satisfying 
herself with the financial side of the problem. 
Various dioceses had Education Societies which 
furnished funds to deserving students for the 



178 The Sunday-School. 

ministry. In 1835 it was planned to unite these 
organizations into a General Education Society, 
under the direct control of the General Conven- 
tion. The House of Deputies adopted a con- 
stitution for such an organization and referred 
it to the House of Bishops. Its only provision 
aside from those of officering and manipulating 
the work was for the loan of money without 
interest to candidates, who were to be thus aided 
in each stage of education. When the bishops 
saw how the Sunday-school was pushing its way 
into the General Convention and demanding 
official recognition, they paused to consider the 
best arrangement of the overlapping activities. 
The formation of the Education Society, there- 
fore, was stayed until the deliberations of the 
Sunday School Union should fully mature. 

Fourth Movement Toward Centralization 
Touched Public Education. The second of 
the two educational movements mentioned was 
like the first tentative, but its scope was larger 
and being more in the nature of an undercurrent 
shows more clearly the trend of the Church at 
that period. It bore directly upon the educa- 
tional life of the nation in general, and espe- 
cially upon the primary and secondary phases. 

Place of the Sunday-School in Popular Edu- 
cation. For a long time after the War of 1812 



Movements Toward Centralization. 179 

educational conditions that were somewhat 
chaotic prevailed in the United States. It is but 
stating a pregnant fact that the Sunday-school 
as a secular as well as a religious agency was a 
not unimportant factor in injecting into the 
chaos some degree of order. This is a theme 
in itself well worthy of extended investigation. 
The Church concerns herself, of course, with 
religious instruction mainly. But when the 
state under more finished social and political 
conditions at last had time to devote itself in 
earnest to the development of public education, 
she quickly found herself facing another serious 
problem. In this development, according to the 
principles of the national constitution, it was ev- 
ident that the early mingling of religion with 
secular instruction must soon meet the chal- 
lenge of freedom from religious bias. With the 
growing Jewish, Roman Catholic and other re- 
ligious populations, as well as the increasing 
forces of infidelity, the scriptural versions of 
Reformed Christianity naturally aroused oppo- 
sition, and freedom from religious bias in the 
end came to mean simply the removal of every 
vestige of religious influence from the public 
educational system. 

Educational Leaders Try to Stay the Devel- 
opment of Irreligious Public School. Natur- 



180 The Sunday-School. 

ally, the Church from her side objected to such 
irreligious training in a so-called Protestant 
nation. Before 1835 a number of her educa- 
tors had applied their talents to the solution of 
the problem, whereby the crudely operated day- 
schools might be improved and religion might 
not only remain part of the general education, 
but might still be to a greater or less extent 
its directive and unifying principle. To seek 
this solution William A. Muhlenberg, it will be 
remembered, had left his prosperous parish at 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and founded his 
peculiar schools. Others, like Benjamin O. 
Peers, about the same time began to work on 
lines laid down by educational reformers of 
continental Europe, prominent among whom 
were Pestalozzi and Froebel. In all this work 
the Church's educators were giving great assist- 
ance to the state in its efforts to further the evo- 
lution of the public school. By the time the 
General Convention of 1838 met these men 
thought they were in a fair way of solving the 
problem happily for both Church and State, and 
were ready to bring the subject to the notice of 
that body. In their scheme, however, the Sun- 
day-school had no place, or, at least, as will be 
seen, its place was a very subsidiary one and 
one of a temporary character. 



Movements Toward Centralization. 181 

Fifth Movement Toward Centralization 
Touched the General Missionary Society. 

Then, too, another movement, which was not 
exactly educational, had been inaugurated 
within the Church during this period. This 
touched her missionary system. A well-defined 
change in her missionary policy having been 
outlined, the organization of her general 
missionary society necessarily invited over- 
hauling and readjustment. The plan al- 
most universally favored was the consoli- 
dation of the two committees of the Domes- 
tic and Foreign Missionary Society, placing all 
the purely missionary activity, both foreign and 
domestic, under one committee, but retaining 
the other to take charge of all the general edu- 
cational work of the Church. This would ren- 
der unnecessary the formation of a new General 
Education Society and the continuance of the 
General Sunday-School Union. It would also 
forestall any movement toward the organiza- 
tion of a society to take care of secular schooling 
in all its phases. 

Commission Appointed at the General Con- 
vention of 1838. Accordingly, when the whole 
subject was presented to the Convention of 
1838, a Commission was appointed under the 
direction of a Joint-committee from both 



182 The Sunday-School. 

houses. It consisted of Bishop George W. 
Doane, Dr. Francis L. Hawks, Dr. William A. 
Muhlenberg and the Rev. Benjamin 0. Peers, 
who were "to take into consideration the import- 
ant duty of the Christian education of the youth 
of both sexes in accordance with the principles 
of the Church ; to collect information respecting 
the efforts already made and the institutions 
already established for the purpose; to exert 
themselves as far as possible in extending a 
proper interest upon the subject among the 
clergy and laity of the Church, and to make 
such a report as to aid them in adopting the best 
measures for promoting this great object." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND THE GENERAL CON- 
VENTION. 

Peers' Influence in the Commission Para- 
mount. Peers' influence in the Commission 
proved to be paramount. He was chosen to be 
its spokesman and began at once a "campaign 
of education/' in order to guide the popular 
mind into the lines along which the Committee 
intended to carry out its work. That the Sun- 
day-school was to play a leading part in the agi- 
tation is evident from the fact that Peers, in 
1839, was elected to the editorship of the Sunr 
day-School Visitor, the newly subsidized official 
organ of the General Sunday-School Union. He 
changed its name to The Journal of Religious 
Education, and devoted its issues for the three 
years between the sessions of the General Con- 
vention almost exclusively to the projects of the 
183 



184 The Sunday-School. 

Committee. He was also chosen to be the 
Union's General Secretary. 

Peers' Career. Peers, who was Dr. Hawks' 
protege, was a native of Virginia and by early 
training a Presbyterian of the old Puritan 
school. He had devoted himself to the Pesta- 
lozzian system of education, which was then 
beginning to stir the social life of the United 
States. The heroic devotion and self-sacrifice 
of the noble Swiss enthusiast was being better 
understood and beginning to be more deeply 
admired by Americans. Peers had served long 
in deacon's orders as a schoolmaster and college- 
president, chiefly in the diocese of Kentucky, 
during which time he had published a volume 
entitled American Education, or Strictures on a 
System of National Education. This, with an 
introduction written by Dr. Hawks, gave him 
considerable prestige. 

Abnormal Character of the Sunday-School 
Affirmed. The organ of the campaign began 
by assuming for it the limits of a national pol- 
icy. It pointed at the fact that the elements of 
national education were then in a state of flux. 
If the Church desired to do her most important 
duty of impressing the mould of her influence 
on the gradually forming educational system 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 185 

of the nation, she must act at once and with 
most positive principles. The Church's earlier 
start had provided wrong measures. The Sun- 
day-school was, indeed, the illegitimate off- 
spring of the force of circumstances and had 
carried the evolution far out of the traditional 
or catholic lines laid down by primitive Gospel 
mandates. It was lamented that the develop- 
ment hitherto had attained such consistency as 
to render necessary frequent reference to Bing- 
ham's Antiquities in order to find out what was 
the real function of the educator. And had the 
clergy done their duty in the earlier stage the 
Sunday-school would not exist. These were 
frank utterances for the editor of a magazine 
devoted to Sunday-school interests, but they 
were made with the earnestness of deep convic- 
tion and simply portrayed the influences of 
Peers' inherited Puritan prejudices touching 
the institution. 

The Parish as the Normal Unit of Education. 

It was affirmed, furthermore, that the work of 
the Committee would be framed on the confident 
assumption that the Church's liturgy contained 
the true elements of a system of education, the 
execution of which she had made obligatory on 
her members. These elements were summed up 
in the Catechism and the Offices of Baptism (a 






186 The Sunday-School. 

statement which gave rise to the term Baptismal 
Education, current at that period). The liturgy 
assumed that education, if it meant anything 
at all, was a unity; that religion was a neces- 
sary, and, furthermore, the fundamental, ele- 
ment. The parish was the unit of the compre- 
hensive educational system. The clergy were 
the only authorized superintendents, directors 
or commissioners ; the parents, aided by sponsors 
and catechists (instructors of all sorts) were the 
teachers. The ideal means outlined were the 
parish day-school with its proper share of relig- 
ious instruction, family training and church- 
worship, especially the catechetical service, 
which was designed to be a review as well as a 
test of the other means. 

The Sunday-School as a Missionary Agency 
in Extra-Parochial Conditions. Manifestly the 
Sunday-school had no place in this scheme. Its 
wonderful fruits, however, as a provisional or 
temporary means were fully acknowledged. Its 
missionary force in extra parochial conditions 
was clearly indicated. 

Free and Open Church System. To these 
statements, which embodied the substance of its 
report, the Committee added the recommenda- 
tion that each parish establish at once an effi- 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 187 

cient day-school; that parents do their best to 
promote compulsory attendance, not only of 
their own, but of all the children of the Church 
at these schools ; that the clergy begin the after- 
noon catechetical service, at which catechising 
should take the place of the sermon and the chil- 
dren of church-parents, leaving the Sunday- 
schools, be required to present themselves 
with their sponsors in baptism and as many 
of the parents as possible; that the Sun- 
day-school continue to exist side by side with the 
catechetical service, but merely as a missionary 
agency — to instruct children of families not 
understanding the Church's ways and not hav- 
ing sittings in the churches. As soon as these 
became attached to the Church, they were to be 
graduated into the regular agency. Lest this 
promote a class-spirit repugnant to the genius 
of the nation, the "free and open" church-system 
was strongly recommended by some clergy, 
enabling the poorest to secure pews on equal foot- 
ing with the richest. 

Vote of the General Convention of 1841 Re- 
garded as Calling for a General Movement to 
Revive Traditional Methods of Education. The 

Committee's report, which filled a small octavo 
volume, was duly presented by Bishop Doane at 
the General Convention of 1841 and by vote of 






188 The Sunday-School. 

both Houses "referred to the Executive Commit- 
tee of the Board of Managers of the Sunday- 
School Union of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, to be printed and distributed/' That 
the Committee and many other clergy sincerely 
believed the vote to express the Church's sanc- 
tion of the statements made in the report and an 
official authorization of its recommendations is 
evident from their action immediately after the 
close of the session. In all parts of the country 
began a wide-spread, though quiet agitation, in 
which the clergy of all shades of thought joined. 
Men like Bishops Mcllvaine and Meade went 
hand in hand with Bishops Doane and Ives, Dr. 
George Boyd with Dr. Francis L. Hawks, pro- 
claiming in Diocesan Conventions and other 
public gatherings as well as in the parishes the 
prospective benefits of a revival of the "good old 
practice of pastoral catechising in open church." 
The primitive and apostolic order of free seats 
and free-will offerings was also prominently dis- 
cussed. Peers took sick during the compilation 
of his report and passed away. But his succes- 
sor continued the campaign in the Journal of 
Religious Education, boldly claiming for it the 
authority of the General Convention and urging 
upon the various parishes of the nation the 
immediate adoption of all the proposed changes. 
"Not a few parish day-schools were opened. 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 189 

Various dioceses founded colleges into which 
the scholars of these institutions might graduate. 
It was at this time that Bishop Doane, building 
on the foundations laid by Muhlenberg, who had 
left his educational work at Flushing to organize 
an "ideal parish" in New York, planned and 
started Burlington College. Other facts prove 
that at least by most of the clergy of the Church 
in America the whole subject was regarded ser- 
iously as a movement of national aim and of 
hopeful purpose. 

Hopefulness of Church Leaders to Unite 
Protestant Christians in a Common System of 
Parish Schools. To those who questioned the 
hopefulness of the agitation, who found it hard 
to believe that the Church could hope to assume 
the definite leadership of the nation in any- 
thing, Peers gravely replied that in the poverty 
of good educational establishments in the 
United States, all American Christians would 
welcome the right kind of schools. On account 
of the vast increase of immigration the influence 
of alien Boman Catholic elements in the conduct 
of public schools was already beginning to be 
dreaded. The exclusion of every form of relig- 
ious representation from the common school sys- 
tem in order to offset this influence, thus beget- 
ting an irreligious institution naturally repug- 



190 The Sunday-School. 

nant to every form of Christianity, would lead 
to Tinite Protestant Christians on an efficient 
parish-school system, which could be made suit- 
able to all the religious and secular needs of 
these. Such a system might be made part of the 
developing public school system at first and 
afterward might comprehend it. There was no 
body so apt to unite all Protestants as the 
Church from whose loins the great majority had 
gone out. The prime need was a parish-school 
of high order in every parish of the land. "All 
sorts and conditions of Christians would flow 
unto it." 

To the practical thinker of the twentieth cen- 
tury all this may seem strangely like visionary 
dreaming. Yet among very practical men of 
that time there was an astonishing faith in the 
ultimate (and that not far distant) realization 
of the dreams. It was a time for idealizing. The 
steam-railroad, first introduced in 1832, was 
being perfected and was removing the localizing 
barriers of distance that had made the nation's 
social and political, as well as its religious life 
a sort of conglomerate of provincial and often 
narrowly sectarian elements, each with its local 
peculiarities. The first steamship crossed the 
Atlantic in 1838 and the nation was feeling the 
tremendous force of the now demonstrated truth, 
that the unity of its own widely scattered ele- 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 191 

ments, the practical communion with kinsfolk 
abroad, in short, the brotherhood of man was 
a dawning reality, and that, physical and geo- 
graphical barriers having been thrown down, 
others would soon be eliminated. The great 
inventions, utilizing steam, together with penny 
(and other greatly reduced rates of) postage, the 
enormous increase in the circulation of popular 
literature of all sorts and various kindred 
means of facilitating the social intercommunion 
of separated fragments led men to see visions 
of a national and international comity, that 
made more plausible the doctrine of a catholic 
communion and inspired with firmer hope those 
who yearned for its speedy realization. 

Relation of the Commission's Plan to the 
Oxford Movement. The Committee's educa- 
tional plan was but the radiation of the same 
light, which many so-called Catholics in Eng- 
land saw. They, too, were dreaming of a truly 
catholic, undivided Church, with its practical 
leadership of the state and its sphere of in- 
fluence in all matters of public concern. 

Effort to Change the Church's Name. At 

that time, also, began a determined effort to 
change the name of the Church in America. 
Larger ideals demanded a larger name than 



192 The Sunday-School. 

Protestant Episcopal. It was not, however, 
because the old title presented any conditions at 
variance with the growing catholicity of the 
time. As "evangelical truth and apostolic order" 
had been the motto of the early leaders, so 
"Catholicity and Protestantism" was the motto 
later on. To anyone who reads the utterances of 
representative Churchmen in the fourth decade 
of the nineteenth century there can be no doubt 
that leaders of all shades of thought were per- 
sistent in their claims of being both Protestant 
and Catholic. "No one then of any standing ser- 
iously hinted at any incongruity in the terms. 
Both were considered consistent, co-ordinate and 
complementary expletives. 

Aim of American Scholarship to Remove 
the Stigma from the Title "Catholic." Cath- 
olicity, indeed, as an expository term, had fallen 
into disrepute. It had been made the distinctive 
attribute of Romanism, whose Catholicism was 
in a measure denied and execrated by Church 
leaders as well as dissenters. The Church had 
sturdily maintained her claim to catholicity 
throughout all her early tribulations, but she 
was hardly in the position to vaunt it except in 
milder terms, like ancient, apostolic, universal. 
Her scholars irrespective of Tractarian in- 
fluences had set people right in the use of the 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 193 

title "catholic," which had lost much of its 
bogey character and was now much used in con- 
nection with her traditions, though generally 
associated with Protestant, against which no one 
as yet had a special grievance. 

No Opposition to Protestant Episcopal. Nor 

was there any opposition whatever to "Protest- 
ant Episcopal" as part of her legal or official 
title. It was conceded on all sides that these 
two designations were suitable as such. Any 
effort in the Old-Fashioned High Church period 
to expunge these words from a single legal or 
religious document would have been langhed 
down by an overwhelming popular opinion 
within the Church. 

Desire for an Every-Day Name, Non-Sec- 
tarian and Non-Localizing. Yet before 1840 
there w T as manifest a growing desire for a famil- 
iar, everyday name, indicating more than a few 
bare essentials of her essence. The natural aim 
was to bring that name into harmony with her 
title in the creed, set for use in her daily pray- 
ers, which designated her as the Holy Catholic 
Church. The need was felt of a broader, non- 
localizing, non-sectarian name for common use. 
Those who gloried in their sectarian Protestant- 
ism differentiated their ism from the Church's 



194 The Sunday-School. 

Catholicity and made it clearly exclusive of her 
essential characteristics. Then, too, those who 
had been made to suffer from the force of Prot- 
estant persecution began to manifest their 
execration of the term. Naturally, in the diffi- 
cult attempt to secure a distinctive as well as an 
inclusive title, conformity with the legal name 
of the mother-Church of England would be 
desirable. 

First Attempts to Secure a Broader Title. 

The first move was made about 1840, when the 
General . Sunday-School Union published 
"Beaven's Catechism/' dedicated to the Bishops 
and Clergy of the Reformed Church of Amer- 
ica. The Union's publications included some 
treatises emphasizing the sacramentarian and 
ecclesiastical veiws of the Catholic Revival, and 
this catechism was regarded as an important 
addition, putting into definite shape a new phase 
of the agitation for Catholic appliances. Several 
attempts were also made to prefix a similar title 
to the Church Almanac of the early forties. 
Some of the extremer and more susceptible 
clergy, burning with tract-kindled fires, added 
Catholic to this designation. One who had been 
a Presbyterian signalized his devotion to his 
new love by nailing a gilded sign-board to his 
little church in San Francisco, inscribed "The 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 195 

Reformed. Catholic Church of the Holy Trin- 
ity." When the General Convention of 1844 
met, it was known that at least one deputy, Pro- 
fessor Ogilby, of the General Seminary, had 
added "Reformed Catholic" to his credentials. 

Changed Attitude of Former Enthusiasts 
Toward the Sunday-School. An additional evi- 
dence of the influence of the Catholic Renais- 
sance is the changed attitude toward the Sunday- 
school on the part of many who had been enthus- 
iastically devoted to its development. The cate- 
chetical service was begun in many parishes on 
Sunday afternoons, not as an adjunct, but to a 
great extent as a substitute for the customary 
school-work. The purely missionary character 
of the institution, as outlined by the Committee 
of Education, was emphasized by the action of 
the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society 
in 1841 in seeking to attach the Sunday-school 
system to itself more closely by calling for a 
general Christmas offering for missions from 
each school. This was a forerunner of the 
splendid Advent and Lenten offerings, which in 
recent years have exceeded a hundred thousand 
dollars. The more aggressive leaders in the 
Catholic revival began to attack the work of 
the Sunday-school as a regular educational 
means and even to belittle its fruits. Bishop 



196 The Sunday-School. 

Doane in 1843, changing his former note of 
unqualified praise, addressed his diocesan con- 
vention as follows : "I should be sorry to think 
of the Sunday-school as such as a permanent 
idea in the Church. I do not care to see it 
stereotyped in bricks and mortar. It is the off- 
spring of a superficial, labor-saving, self -sparing 
age. It has done some good, but hindered more, 
and brought with it much mischief. Crowding 
in upon the proper duties, making a working- 
day of it — a very treadmill of tasks and teach- 
ers, of school-books and school-rooms — a dismal 
day of drudgery, instead of the sweet Sabbath of 
the soul." 

Resistance to the New Movement in the Vis 
Inertiae of the Laity. The Catholic Revival 
was not long under way, however, before it 
encountered resistance, which centered in the 
conservatism of the laity. Eager clerical minds, 
quick to form ideals and with sanguine hopeful- 
ness and the eye of faith to apprehend their 
ready realization, had to reckon with the vis 
inertiae of the slowly moving, coolly calculating 
and practically reasoning lay mind. Such a 
mind was influenced more strongly by the force 
of existing conditions than a sentimental rever- 
ence for historical ideals. 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 197 

Practical View of Religious Conditions in 
the United States. The attack upon the Sun- 
day-school brought vividly to view the circum- 
stances surrounding the institution's inception. 
To acknowledge that it was the creature of 
untoward social and political conditions was 
but to acknowledge that such conditions had 
existed and that they had operated strongly 
enough to bring it into being. And it was 
clearly seen that they still existed in 1840. In 
America it was impossible seriously to regard 
the parish as the unit even of organized Church 
life. Parish lines could nowhere be definitely 
drawn. There could be no such thing as a com- 
prehensive system of parish schools. The 
church services, no matter how faithfully or effi- 
ciently performed, could reach but a fraction 
of those in need of public education. And 
family training, almost a dead tree before, 
instead of becoming more productive of good 
fruits, was growing less capable of impressing 
the mind of the rising generation. The peculiar 
conditions touching the business-life of the coun- 
try, the struggle not only for fortunes, but for 
the very essentials of existence left parents with 
but little opportunity or aptitude for educa- 
tional efficiency of any sort. In fact, the com- 
mon school system of the state was being devel- 
oped on the assumption that the school and not 



198 The Sunday-School. 

the home is the place for study. School books 
are often left in the school-rooms after the daily 
session. The practical-minded laity could not 
gloss over the defects and needs of the hour to 
engage in a search for what pertained to the 
traditions of the past, even though these were 
well attested and * intimately associated with 
orthodox practices. 

Effect of Personal Relationship Between 
Teachers and Scholars. Then, too, as has been 
intimated, a most powerful influence for the 
maintenance of Sunday-schools was the personal 
relationship with the scholars that had been fos- 
tered by the teachers. The influence of the lat- 
ter had grown to be a living force in the lives 
of their charges. Peers' plan of having the 
teachers stand as god-fathers and god-mothers 
for their scholars, it was thought, would greatly 
facilitate the practical realization of the ideal 
baptismal education. Yet as a matter of fact 
this very relationship proved to be perhaps the 
greatest impediment to the general abolition of 
the Sunday-school as planned by the Committee 
on Education. Scholars refused to give up their 
customary dependence on their teachers and thus 
the effort to substitute the catechetical service 
for the Sunday-school proved fruitless, even 
though the teachers themselves might have been 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 199 

inclined to fall in with the recommendation of 
the Joint-Committee. 

Resistance Defeats Incorporation of the 
Sunday-School Union as a General Church In- 
stitution. The resistance to the progress of the 
new movement was not at first of an active char- 
acter. It was simply the dead weight of a pon- 
derous body, refusing to go beyond its normal 
gait, carefully calculating at each stage, never 
hazarding a step on uncertain ground and 
always reckoning with the present without los- 
ing sight of the past or failing to cast a provi- 
dent eye into the future. It was this imperturb- 
able spirit of conservatism that in 1838 defeated 
the efforts to secure the incorporation of the 
Sunday-School Union as a general Church insti- 
tution under the direct government of the Gen- 
eral Convention. At the Union's triennial 
meeting of that year the committee appointed to 
consider Boyd's resolution divided and pre- 
sented two reports. The majority report, signed 
by all the committee but one, strongly recom- 
mended that the General Convention place the 
Union in the same relations to itself which were 
sustained by the Board of Missions. 

Plan of the more Conservative Church Lead- 
ers. Project Tabled. The minority of one 
reported that "believing the instruction of the 



200 The Sunday-School. 

young as well as of adults to belong exclusively 
to the parish minister, who is responsible to his 
diocesan for the manner in which he performs 
this duty, and that the Sunday-School Union is 
only necessary to provide material to enable him 
the better to discharge this duty, and that it is 
to be regarded rather in the character of a busi- 
ness association than an ecclesiastical or spirit- 
ual body, and that to refer the same to the Gen- 
eral Convention would be unnecessarily to 
increase the subjects on which that body would 
be required to legislate, he conceives it to be 
inexpedient to refer the operations of the Union 
to that body. But, inasmuch as it is desirable 
to have the co-operation of the whole Church 
in the Sunday-school cause, and to preserve, as 
far as practicable, uniformity in Sunday-school 
instruction, and to increase as rapidly as possi- 
ble the stock of books in the depository, the com- 
mittee suggests, whether, by an alteration in 
the Constitution, these important measures may 
not be secured, and in such a way, as will make 
the Sunday-School Union a general institution 
of the Church, but without giving the General 
Convention the trouble of taking the charge of 
it. He would, therefore, offer the following res- 
olution : 

"Resolved, That the Fourth Article of the 
Constitution be altered so as to read as follows : 



Sunday-School and General Convention. 201 

"The business of the society shall be con- 
ducted by a Board of Managers, consisting of 
the President, Vice-President, a Treasurer, a 
Secretary, the clergy of the place where the 
Board of Managers meet, who have Sunday- 
schools in union with the society, and two other 
clergymen and one layman, to be chosen from 
each diocese by the convention thereof, the three 
members thus chosen, to be, with the bishop of 
the diocese, the Sunday-School Committee 
thereof. 

"The Board shall appoint an Executive Com- 
mittee, at each annual meeting, consisting of the 
bishops, ex-omcio, and twelve other members, 
to transact such business as may be committed to 
them by that body. The Sunday-School Com- 
mittee of each diocese may recommend, either 
for publication or sale by the Union, any work 
that has been examined and approved of by 
every member thereof." 

While the clergy, generally, enthusiastically 
labored for the majority report, the rank and 
file of the laity, with a few of the clergy styled 
Low Churchmen, rigidly held to the other. To 
avert any contention at such a critical period in 
the development of Sunday-school enterprise 
the leaders thought best to table the whole sub- 
ject for the time being, that the way might be 



202 The Sunday-School. 

clear for the projects of the Joint-Committee on 
Education. 

Failure to Create a Sentiment for Tradition- 
al Methods. The accession of Peers to the edi- 
torship of the Union's official journal served 
only to emphasize the power of the vis inertiae 
of the conservative element. Its immediate and 
direct effect was the waning circulation of that 
journal, which was to have been the ever-widen- 
ing medium for propagating the educational 
views of the Catholic renaissance. This was a 
most discouraging check on the main purpose of 
the Joint-committee, namely, to create a strong 
sentiment in favor of traditional methods. 
Stolid indifference is ever the deadliest weapon 
against propagandism of any sort, which gen- 
erally thrives on active opposition. Then, too, 
the movement to establish day-schools under the 
supervision of the various parish authorities 
proved to be successful only where the clergy 
had large general public influence and sufficient 
funds at their command. In a couple of years 
the hopelessness of the movement was beginning 
to be feared by some of its most sanguine pro- 
moters. 

Reactionary Forces Stirring Up Much En- 
thusiasm for Sunday-Schools as Constituted. 

Shortly before 1844 the inertia of passive resist- 






Sunday-School and General Convention. 203 

ance began to take on the nature of a positive 
reactionary force, whose immediate fruit was 
the vigorous application of a renewed energy in 
the support and upbuilding of Sunday-schools. 
Several great Sunday-school organizers, like the 
Eev. Richard Newton, took the field with deter- 
mined purpose. Prominent laymen, some like 
Jay Cooke from other Christian bodies, now 
threw themselves into the Church's Sunday- 
school work with intense earnestness, again set- 
ting the Church aglow with spiritual fervor. 
Splendid schools were built up, but as individ- 
ual enterprises. The local or parish idea pre- 
vailed and reacted against the efforts for the 
centralization of Sunday-school interests in gen- 
eral and their incorporation into the official 
agencies of the Church. 

Failure of the Plan to Form a General Edu- 
cation Society. The General Union, having 
lost the confidence of many of the most active 
Sunday-school workers, rapidly lost their sup- 
port. It soon became simply a publication 
agency or book-business and as such received 
but meager patronage from Churchmen. When 
the grand theme of Christian education, dis- 
cussed in 1841, came up for action in the Con- 
vention of 1844, it assumed a ridiculously 
narrow shape in a resolution, that, the House 



204 The Sunday-School. 

of Bishops concurring, a Joint-Committee of the 
two Houses he appointed to inquire into the 
expediency of establishing as a branch of our 
missionary operations a Board of Publication 
or Department for the Promotion of Christian 
Knowledge. The Bishops did not concur and 
the efforts to unite the various Sunday-school 
activities into a General Department under the 
control of the Church's legislative body proved 
fruitless. 

Opposition in the General Convention of 
1844 to Change of the Church's Name. The 

reactionary force of the counter movement 
showed itself in the Convention of 1844 in two 
other resolutions, supported by a few of the 
clergy and some of the laity. One referred to 
the efforts to substitute Reformed Catholic for 
Protestant Episcopal in the name of the Church, 
and read : "The style and title of the Church is 
the 'Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
States of America/ and the practice of omitting 
its true appellation in printed documents, or of 
substituting any other is derogatory to the Prot- 
estant character of our Church and of evil ten- 
dency." The other resolution was more general 
and touched upon "the serious errors of doctrine 
that had been within a few years introduced and 
extensively promulgated by means of tracts, 



Sunday School and General Convention. 205 

through the periodical press and from the pul- 
pit." Nothing, however, came of these resolu- 
tions. The first was withdrawn on the recogni- 
tion that no one had denied the Protestant char- 
acter of the Church. The second was covered 
by a substitute to the effect that "the Liturgy, 
Offices and Articles of the Church were suffi- 
cient exponents of the essential doctrines of 
Holy Scripture and that the Church is not 
responsible for the errors of individuals, whether 
they be members of the Church or otherwise." 

Part Played by the Sunday-School in the 
Controversy. In the long and animated discus- 
sions of the Convention of 1844, the Sunday- 
school occasioned its share of the controversy, 
not only in that it was to a certain extent the 
theme of the debate, but more particularly in 
that many of the "Tracts and Printed Docu- 
ments" had been published under its auspices 
and its official journal had taken a not unimpor- 
tant part in the utterances of the "periodical 
press." 



CHAPTER VIII. 



CONTROVERSY. 



Tolerant Spirit of the Convention of 1844. 

While a few evidences of bitter controversy 
appeared on the surface in the Convention of 
1844, that interesting gathering, in reality, was 
marked by but little difference of opinion. At 
the opening of its session the House of Deputies 
was moved by the earnest words of its president, 
breathing the spirit of peace and tolerance : "As 
the organization of the Church in the United 
States rapidly extends itself to the remotest ter- 
ritories and the number of dioceses with their 
Episcopal heads are proportionately multiplied, 
it must be expected that opposite views and 
tastes and sometimes principles will be found 
to exist within her borders. Mankind cannot 
exhibit a different aspect in the nineteenth cen- 
tury and in this country, from what was ever 

held before. Upon one characteristic of the 
206 



Controversy. 207 

social state, however, we are all agreed; that 
liberty of conscience is the inalienable right of 
every child of God, and that persecution for the 
propagation of the Religious Faith should be 
the offspring only of ages darker than our own. 
But the faggot, the scourge and the axe are not 
the only instruments of persecution. We may 
attempt so to fetter the exercise of the judgment 
and conscience of our fellowmen and so to visit 
their honest opinions which differ from our own 
with the penalty of our harsh epithets and 
rebukes as to show a willingness to inflict the 
extreme penalty. Let us not so condemn the 
convictions of our Brethren!" It was this 
broad, tolerant spirit that had brought so much 
prosperity to the Church during the preceding 
three decades, and the session of this Conven- 
tion closed in utmost harmony and good-will. 

Perversion of Newman Brings on a Crisis. 

But the perversion of Newman and his friends 
to Rome next year changed all this and the 
dread of a Jesuitical propaganda and a papal 
hierarchy magnified many innocent events that 
would otherwise have passed unnoticed. Before 
the people had time to think of these perversions 
seriously a burst of indignation against Roman- 
izing principles convulsed the Church and the 
Low Church movement began on the crest of a 



208 The Sunday-School. 

wave of popular excitement that followed in the 
train of a No Popery storm. Every source from 
which the dreaded doctrines could have eman- 
ated was now scanned with foreboding and mili- 
tant gaze. Bishop Meade, who assumed the 
leadership of the movement and who two years 
before had pronounced the charge of Tractar- 
ianism against the American Church a libel, 
now became conscious that for a long time "the 
leaven of Romish error had been insinuating 
itself more and more in the most dangerous and 
effective way ; that is through the catechisms and 
tales and other books, which under the sanction 
of the names of all the bishops and some of the 
clergy and laity were put into the hands of pas- 
tors, parents, teachers and children as inculcat- 
ing the doctrines of the Bible and the Church." 

The Sunday-School Union's Publications 
Suspected. The publications of the Sunday- 
School Union were, of course, aimed at in this 
presentment and first challenged. At a meet- 
ing of the Union's Board of Managers in June, 
1846, it was resolved that "a copy of the books 
of the Union be sent to each bishop, that he 
might examine and express his opinion on the 
same." It was also ordered that 'henceforth no 
new book be issued, until a copy of the same 
had been transmitted to each bishop and thirty 



Controversy. 209 

days allowed for examination and the state- 
ment of objections." 

Bishop Meade's Denunciatory Open Letters. 

Bishop Meade received his allotment to the 
number of about two hundred and set to work 
at once to review twenty of this number, assign- 
ing the rest to a student at the Virginia Sem- 
inary. This young man found nothing in the 
books to seriously criticise. E"ot being able to 
comment unfavorably upon them he was stig- 
matized as a convert to the Romish tendencies 
and put away. The Bishop of Virginia pub- 
lished his strictures on the teaching of the books 
he had examined in two open letters, which went 
through several editions and created consider- 
able commotion in Church circles. Most of the 
books were of the usual Sunday-school variety, 
consisting of stories and tales of an allegorical 
nature, and were written largely in symbolical 
language, loosely applied to Church doctrines 
and practices. To a critical mind seeking for 
variations from close definitions and rigidly 
interpreted doctrinal propositions, it was easy to 
find manifold evidences of seemingly heretical 
teaching. 

Baptismal Regeneration and Symbolism of 
Sunday-School Books Under the Ban. Thus in 
the books baptism was pictured as putting on 



210 The Sunday-School. 

white garments and crossing a stream to escape 
from a wilderness full of howling wild beasts. 
Sometimes the crossing was made with crosses 
in the hands. A few of the stories were of med- 
iaeval knights, who met holy men living in seclu- 
sion in the midst of forests and learned of them 
humility and often distaste for the world. All 
this seemed to savor of a partiality for med- 
iaeval millinery and Romish practices. The 
fact that Keble's Christian Year was frequently 
quoted in Sunday-school books was a matter of 
suspicious moment to Bishop Meade, who had 
not read that most popular devotional treatise. 
Even the catechisms of the Union and other 
books of the weightier kind had unguarded lan- 
guage to an inquisitorial eye, as might be 
expected in writings for the young. Bishop 
Meade saw in these as well as in the story-books 
the tendency especially to materialize baptismal 
regeneration— sl theme much on the lips and 
under the pen of the religious controversialist 
of that period, and one which proved to be the 
upper corner of the rock that entered into the 
unfortunate Reformed Episcopal split. 

Exclusion of Sectarian Bodies Assailed. Be- 
sides baptismal regeneration, Bishop Meade 
found a second chief complaint in the positive 
teaching of the books on the nature of the min- 



Controversy. 211 

istry, and its relation to the membership of the 
Holy Catholic Church. He took the ground 
that in the Pastoral Letter of 1808, by urging 
her own officials and those of the Catholic 
Church at large to take their share in the work 
of extending Christianity on the Western con- 
tinent, the American Church had admitted our 
sectarian brethren into membership of the Cath- 
olic Church ; while the Sunday-School Union's 
books based on Bishop Hobart's catechism 
seemed to set up narrowing limits. 

Other Errors Condemned. Various other 
errors in faith and practice like prayer for the 
dead and infant damnation, some held by 
Romanists and some by Calvinists, were rather 
vaguely pointed out in seemingly innocent bits 
of poetry and anathematized as Jesuitical feel- 
ers of a dreaded ecclesiastical octopus. 

The Sunday-School Union's Open Letter in 
Reply. The administration of the Union 
replied also in an Open Letter, utterly repudiat- 
ing the charges of its accusers and affirming in 
detail the same views on the various doctrinal 
matters as the Bishop of Virginia. A general 
exception was made as regards the second chief 
complaint, which was dismissed with a single 
pointed question to Bishop Meade, asking if he 



212 The Sunday-School. 

would be willing to accord membership in the 
Church to any not admitted under the three- 
fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons. 
It is somewhat amusing to note, too, that the 
Union's reply pointed out the fact that the great 
majority of the condemned publications had 
been written many years before and that most 
of them had been in circulation generally some 
fifteen years. One book, particularly scored 
for its Romish or Pagan materialism, had been 
written a hundred and thirty-five years before 
for his famous Spectator by Addison, who was 
surely not a Jesuit nor a hierarchical Hopkins- 
ian Calvinist. All these publications had been 
read and reread by all sections and had given 
many a pleasant and profitable hour to all 
classes without once arousing a suspicion of per- 
verting a single soul until then. 

Bishop White Quoted by Both Sides. It is 

of interest to note, also, that both sides drew 
largely on Bishop White's writings for their 
weapons of offense and defense in the contro- 
versy. The late lamented patriarch of the 
Church still lived as the arbiter and peacemaker, 
though now less effective as such than in life. 

Dread of Growing Monarchical and Hierar- 
chial Tendencies. Orange Riots. At the pres- 
ent day we may wonder at the rise of such an 



Controversy. 213 

outburst on the basis of the materials found in 
the Open Letters. They would now hardly meet 
with passing notice except for their inadver- 
tence. But those were the days called by the 
Germans "die achtundvierzige," when an horri- 
ble dread and suspicion overwhelmed the minds 
of men. It was the movement toward a climax 
in the reaction against a general and determined 
advance of monarchical and hierarchical powers. 
In Europe the Jesuits had been laboring every- 
where with especial zeal and apparent effect. 
The Roman hierarchy was being re-established 
in England. The fires of Smithfield were begin- 
ning to blaze afresh in the minds and feelings 
of Anglo-Saxon Christians. The a man of blood 
and iron," deserting his earlier liberal leanings, 
became the able and aggressive champion of 
ultra-conservative measures in Germany. And 
in opposition the Jesuits were being expelled or 
feared and dreaded, when not expelled. The 
Evangelical Alliance was founded. The revo- 
lutions of 1848 were convulsing social life in all 
its phases. 

In America, aside from the ominous rumors 
of Jesuitical advance, it was but natural that 
the officials of the Roman Church, vastly rein- 
forced by the sudden and multiplying immigra- 
tion, should seek to consolidate and widen their 
interests in the nation. And naturally, too, came 



214 The Sunday-School. 

the outbursts in opposition heralded by the 
Kensington riots in Philadelphia and the A. P. 
A. and Orange movements in Protestant circles 
all over the country. A state in which fear and 
suspicion brood is not conducive to a calm judg- 
ment on non-essentials. 

Those were the days when bullies in the slums 
of American cities, raising riots, sought to intim- 
idate political and others leaders, who aspired 
to position or fame by denouncing Komish pre- 
tensions and Jesuitical schemes; when crowds 
of boys and young men, gathering for instruc- 
tion in Sunday-school classes and in the 
churches marched out to attack Eomish strong- 
holds with stones and other weapons, often in 
retaliation for outrages perpetrated in these 
riots. 

The Evangelical Knowledge Society Pound- 
ed. The result of the debate in the Open Let- 
ters was, as usual, not satisfying to any of the 
contestants nor their partisans. Turning their 
backs on the General Protestant Episcopal Sun- 
day-School Union, Bishop Meade and his adher- 
ents formed the Protestant Episcopal Society for 
the Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge in 
1847, and now began a serious breach in the 
Church's organization for Sunday-school work. 



Controversy. 215 

Cleavage Between Two Theories of Sunday- 
School Work. It will be well to remember that, 
whatever bearing the above facts had on the 
Church's life in general, they mark the cleavage 
and emphasize the separating ideals of two dis- 
tinct theories of Sunday-school work. The first 
aiming at the gradual elimination of the Sun- 
day-school advocated religious instruction along 
lines, which may be briefly summed up in the 
following proposition : 

"The office of Sunday-school teacher is that 
of assistant catechist or instructor in simple 
truths ; rendered necessary in these evil days by 
the ungodliness of parents and godparents and 
by the scarcity of clergy." 

"Twine all your teaching around the cate- 
chism ; there is nothing revealed but has a refer- 
ence more or less plain in that summary. " 

"Avoid exalting attendance at Sunday-school 
to an equality with church attendance." 

"Any love gained from the children at the 
expense of their God, their parents and their 
clergy is love worse than lost, because abused." 

"Senior classes should be prepared to answer 
the common objections of controversial dis- 
senters." 

"At the name of Jesus every knee should bow. 
The 'fashionable nod' is not mentioned in the 
Scriptures." 



216 The Sunday-School. 

"Let the Baptism of the scholars be ever in 
your mind." 

"Point the unconfirmed to Confirmation as to 
a blessing in store." 

"Sabbath means rest. The Sunday-school 
lessons should, therefore, be as far as possible 
removed from drudgery and work." 

The Rev. Henry J. Morton's Statement of 
One Theory. The Eev. Henry J. Morton's 
words in a lecture to Sunday-school teachers 
plainly define the place of Sunday-schools and 
offer explanatory commentary on Bishop 
Doane's remarks already quoted: "Sunday- 
schools are for the poor and destitute, not for the 
children of the congregation. These last are 
under parental and pastoral care. Sunday- 
schools are perverted, when made labor-saving 
machines for competent but idle parents. Sub- 
stitutes for pastoral instruction, they are the 
heritage of the poor and destitute." This, of 
course, was the ideal of the Church Catholic re- 
gardless of the temporal limits of her univer- 
sality and the sequel shows that not even the 
Church was prepared to adopt it seriously as a 
practical working hypothesis. 

Adherents of the Second Theory Aggressive 
Against Efforts to Minimize the Sunday-School. 

Adherents of the second theory vehemently com- 






Controversy. 217 

batted the effort to minimize the place of the 
Sunday-school and urged its uncompromizing 
retention among the regular means of Church 
progress. It is not necessary to detail its prin- 
ciples. They live in the familiar routine of the 
modern institution. But in almost every dis- 
tinguishing character they bear directly against 
the propositions of the former theory. 

Significant Tendencies of the Publications of 
the Time. A significant tendency in the move- 
ment under the influence of the Church idea was 
to be seen in the material for instruction of the 
newly issued Sunday-school text books. This 
generally centered on questions like "What is a 
Mitre ?" and touched matters of dress and 
form. On the other hand the books of the Sun- 
day-school upholders like those of the early 
movement glowed with deep spirituality drawn 
from the most precious springs of the inspired 
Word. 

General Interest in the Sunday-School En- 
hanced by the Controversy. Decline of the 
Sunday-School Union. Both the Sunday School 
Union and the Evangelical Knowledge Society 
strenuously labored to promote their Sunday- 
school activities. The latter, though at first 
supported by but six bishops, was enthusiasti- 



218 The Sunday-School. 

cally sustained by the laity, whose liberal gifts 
of money swelled its current and endowment 
funds. Its two magazines, the Parish Visitor 
and Children's Banner were widely circulated 
and gained great influence for the doctrines 
peculiar to the Evangelical side of the contro- 
versy. The result of the increased activity of 
the two societies was vastly increased interest 
in the Sunday-school cause and naturally led 
to the downfall of the ideals set up by the first of 
the two theories mentioned above. Xaturally, 
too, the immediate success of the Evangelical 
Knowledge Society reacted against the prosper- 
ity of the older Union, which soon began to feel 
the effects of financial stringency and rapidly 
declined in influence and activity. 

Educational Plans of Traditional Leaders 
Wrecked. The general educational plans, also, 
of the upholders of the Church idea suffered 
shipwreck. The clergy, becoming discouraged 
at the failure of the parish schools, soon ceased 
their efforts for their general establishment. 
Diocesan schools of secondary and collegiate 
grade were confronted with difficulties, chiefly 
of a financial nature. Those begun at Burling- 
ton, "New Jersey, by Bishop Doane came near 
sharing a fate similar to that of Dr. Muhlen- 
berg's institutions at Flushing, which had been 






Controversy. 219 

given up. Besides this they involved the 
Church at large in an unfortunate presentment 
for trial of the Bishop of New Jersey. 

Activity of Adherents of the Second Theory. 

Xot only did the Sunday-school activities re- 
ceive a decided impetus from the rivalry of the 
General Union and its newly established com- 
petitor, but the institution's solidarity was 
enhanced and much emphasized by the conflict- 
ing ideals of the two societies. Though very 
few of its adherents took the extreme views of 
the Union with practical seriousness, it was to 
be expected that Sunday-school officials, rallying 
around the traditions of the institution, would 
entrench themselves in a distinctive policy 
against the attacks of its detractors. And this 
is just what happened. The tendency to make 
the Sunday-school more or less independent of 
the ecclesiastical control of the parish — an 
attitude already deprecated in the few instances 
in which it was assumed in the past — now seem- 
ed to develop as a logical result of the agita- 
tion. Many clergy no longer interested them- 
selves in the Sunday-schools; some not even 
entered them. In not a few parishes the insti- 
tution began to take on the appearance of an 
independent increment to and sometimes of a 
substitute for the Church services. There 



220 The Sunday-School. 

existed some parishes in which the Sunday- 
school work remained by far the most active and 
fruitful of all the agencies. In these the insti- 
tution became the actual center not only of 
spiritual life, but also of executive influence 
within the parish, thus realizing what was 
feared would result in shifting the true center 
of parochial organization. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND THE MEMORIAL PA- 
PERS. 

Muhlenberg's Optimism and New Attempt 
to Unite Christians. Conscious that the lofty 
ideals of catholicity had received a severe shock 
in the stormy events following the perversion of 
Newman, Dr. William A. Muhlenberg began to 
despair of the attainment of those ideals along 
the lines on which he had long been planning. 
His hopeful optimism and inextinguishable 
faith, however, permitted no halt in his en- 
deavor. Churchmen of all schools and pro- 
minent men in other Christian bodies were 
appealed to in his periodical, The Evangelical 
Catholic, in the search for an irenicon, on the 
basis of which united Christianity might not 
only keep pace with the progress of the world 
and the state, but might anticipate and dominate 
both. 



222 The Sunday-School. 

The Memorial to the General Convention of 
1853. To this end the General Convention of 
1853, was memorialized in a petition, in which 
"the divided and distracted state of our Ameri- 
can Protestant Christianity the new and subtle 
forms of unbelief, adapting themselves with 
fatal success to the spirit of the age; the con- 
solidated forces of Romanism, bearing with re- 
newed skill and activity against the Protestant 
faith; and, as more or less the consequence of 
these, the utter ignorance of the Gospel among 
so large a portion of the lower classes of our 
population, making a heathen world in our 
midst; and such considerations; it was stated, 
induced the memorialists to present the inquiry 
"whether the period has not arrived for the 
adoption of measures to meet these exigencies 
of the times more comprehensive than any yet 
provided for by our present ecclesiastical sys- 
tem." 

Ultimate Design of the Memorial. "The 

ultimate design of the memorial," it was de- 
clared, was "to submit the practicability under 
Episcopal auspices of some ecclesiastical sys- 
tem, broader and more comprehensive than that 
now administered." 

Commission Appointed Acts. The Commis- 
sion of bishops appointed at the General Con- 









Sunday-School and Memorial Papers. 223 

vention to consider and report upon the Memor- 
ial, acknowledging it opened questions of the 
most momentous and comprehensive nature, 
upon "which they desired to bestow patient and 
anxious consideration, sent two series of ques- 
tions to representative men to reveal the general 
sentiment of the Church at large. 

Points of Contact Between the Sunday- 
School and the Design of the Memorial. A 

number of these questions touched more or less 
directly upon Sunday-school activities. They 
were as follows : 

"How can the influence of our ministry be 
made to reach the multitudes now living with- 
out the Gospel in our own land and neighbor- 
hood by social intercourse, by extra parochial 
services, by philanthropic labors, and so forth ?" 

"Can any method for division of labor be 
suggested, by which persons of marked ability 
in a certain line shall have their useful gift 
specially exercised to the edification of the 
Church ; and by which ministers thrown out of 
parish life may yet be advantageously occu- 
pied ?" 

"Is our present system of family, Sunday- 
school and catechetical instruction and train- 
ing chargeable with any serious defects ?" 

"What can be done for the religious instruc- 






224 The Sunday-School. 

tion of boys when they leave the Sunday- 
school ?" 

"Do the lay-men and lay-women of our con- 
gregation cooperate sufficiently with the pastor 
in the work of winning souls ? How can that 
cooperation be safely increased?" 

"Ought not young men to be seen in larger 
numbers in our churches ?" 

"Could changes be advantageously made in 
our liturgical services V 

"Ought the Church to make better provision 
for training teachers, nurses, etc. ?" 

"Ought it to afford its female members who 
have leisure and inclination for benevolent 
labors any more systematic means of pursuing 
them than exist at present?" 

These questions, comprehending the whole 
general theme of Christian education, were 
assigned specially to Bishop Doane for discus- 
sion. His paper, perhaps, the most elaborate of 
all the contributions, treated in detail and with 
great power: 

1. Family training; 

2. Pastoral instruction in the Church, Sun- 
day-school and Parish School; 

3. The further religious instruction of boys 
after school age; 

4. Preparation for the ministry ; 



Sunday-School and Memorial Papers. 225 

5. Provisions for training helps to the min- 
istry, such as teachers, nurses. 

How the Church Prescribes for the Scrip- 
tural Scheme of Education. After presenting 
the scriptural scheme of education based on the 
text : "The Lord made a covenant with Jacob 
and gave Israel a law, which He commanded 
our forefathers to teach their children ; that 
their posterity might know it and the children 
which were yet unborn ; to the intent that, when 
they came up, they might show their children 
the same," Bishop Doane's paper showed how 
the Church followed the simple clear-cut meas- 
ures set forth in the Bible. In the rubric of the 
Catechism she requires that fathers, mothers, 
masters and mistresses shall cause their chil- 
dren, servants and apprentices, who have not 
learned their catechism, to come to the church 
at the time appointed and obediently to hear 
and be ordered by the minister. She accumu- 
lates the obligation of this duty to the highest 
point in prescribing the Catechism as a nec- 
essary prelude to confirmation, and confirma- 
tion as a stated necessary prelude to the grace 
of communion. 

General Estimate of the Catechism. The 

connection in this seeming anacolouthon of 



The Sunday-School. 

reasoning from the Scriptures to the Church 
by way of the Catechism was amply fur- 
nished in a general estimate of that ideal 
compendium of instruction. It is the most 
wonderful manual for the religious nurture of 
children ever produced. It is perfectly scrip- 
tural. It is simple to the level of the lowliest. 
It has ranges which the highest cannot reach. 
Every word of it is instructive. It may be 
divided into a hundred lessons, and every one 
will be suggestive of a hundred others. Only 
let parents take it in hand. Let them study it. 
Let them compare it word for word with the 
Scriptures. Let them pray over it. Let them 
teach it to their children. It will grow upon 
their hands. It will engage their hearts and 
through them the hearts of their children. 

Duty of the Parents. To the objection that 
it might be an extremely laborious task to make 
so much out of the Catechism the suggestion was 
made that parents must be willing to take time 
and, if they count it such, trouble. They must 
think what a soul is. They must think 
what it costs to save a lost soul. They 
must think what it is to mould a soul. 
They must think what it is to be crowned with 
soul in heaven. They must interest the hearts of 
their children in the Catechism by their own in- 






Sunday-School and Memorial Papers. 227 

terest in it. They must talk to them of it every 
day. They must illustrate it by the incidents 
and anecdotes of common life. They must show 
how it applies to daily duties and daily diffi- 
culties. And they must make a lesson in it the 
delightful duty and the dutiful delight of the 
most holy day. If they think this is too much, 
what business have they to have children ? If 
any will not do so much, whose fault is it but 
theirs, if they have naughty children, who 
plague them all their lives and after all are lost. 

Influence of Godparents. Adding to the 
devotion of parents the assistance and influence 
of Godfathers and Godmothers, which every 
baptism is required to have, what a lesson to the 
child of the value of his soul, that it has five 
trustees for its safekeeping ! What a guarantee 
of interest here and immortality hereafter, if 
every child could see and feel that they were all 
enlisted for him in their teaching, in their 
prayers, by word and deed and good example ! 

Reason of Failure. The only trouble with 
the Church's system was that it was not used 
faithfully. To speak of the time it will take, of 
the trouble it will give, of the interference it 
will be with business and society, is to confess 



228 The Sunday-School. 

the truth, that people's hearts are not in it ; that 
people are not true to their children ; that peo- 
ple expect a system to do what they themselves 
will not do. 

Parish Pastor the Arbiter Rerum Educa- 
tionally. In the midst of this system ideally 
pursued the parish pastor stands out as the ar- 
biter rerum. He is to do the catechizing in per- 
son. He is to oversee personally every phase of 
the educational life of his people. It would, of 
course, entail responsibilities. It would take 
time and trouble; but not more than any other 
system, perhaps not as much. It would inter- 
fere with preaching. This would be best for 
the pastor, best for the people. One sermon was 
all a man could master. One service in general 
was enough for the congregation at worship. 
The catechetical service for the congregation at 
instruction fully answered every other require- 
ment. The pastor would not then be forced to 
deliver himself of two fractions instead of one 
integer. The people would thus be kept famil- 
iar with the elements of Christian doctrine, 
learning what they are to believe and what they 
are to do to their soul's health in nature's holiest 
and happiest way — out of the mouths of little 
children. 






Sunday-School and Memorial Papers. 229 

Abnormal Position of the Sunday-School. 

In a parish so conducted there will be need of no 
other Sunday-school. In its original use the 
Sunday-school was well conceived. It met a 
present necessity. It was a jury-mast, rigged 
only for an emergency. But it had grown into a 
habit of the Church, much to the hindrance of 
her purity and unity. It had superceded fam- 
ily training. It had superseded pastoral in- 
struction. It had superseded the Church 
in her relations to the Savior's little chil- 
dren. It had introduced a body of teachers 
without responsibility and often more zealous 
than instructed or discreet. It had become an 
organization outside and independent of the 
Church. This is where the Sunday-school was 
not closely and constantly under the direction 
of the pastor. Where it was it but added to his 
labors, not to speak of the difficulties, disorders, 
dissensions often introduced, by which parish 
energies were often crippled and its operations 
embarrassed. 

Bishop Doane's Views Startling Yet Gener- 
ally Held. Bishop Doane thought these might 
seem bold and startling suggestions. Yet it 
seemed to him nine-tenths of the clergy and a 
large proportion of the laity felt their force and 
owned their truth, though still going on under a 



230 The Sunday-School. 

mental protest (because it was the usage of the 
Church) with a labor hard to bear and of but lit- 
tle profit. 

Faith as to Ways and Means. Bishop 
Doane's views on other complementary details 
of the traditional system, such as parish schools, 
means of general education, were those set forth 
fully in the report of the Joint-Committee on 
Education in 1844. Regarding the great and 
trying problem of ways and means — the crux 
of all such ventures — it was asked: "What is 
cost, when souls are to be saved ? When was the 
supply not equal to the demand ? Where do we 
read of any question of cost among the first be- 
lievers ? Only look at the thing as it is. The 
rest will come." The sequel shows that under 
the existing conditions great problems like this 
could not be settled thus easily. 

Solution of Many Vexing Problems. The 

Church's system comprehending multiplied 
weekday and Sunday Bible Classes in the 
various parishes and divinity schools in the 
various dioceses, would to the mind of the 
Bishop of New Jersey effectually solve many 
problems extremely vexing to the Church in all 
ages. It would sift out and call those fitted for 
the ministry, those suited for teaching, for nurs- 






Sunday-School and Memorial Papers. 231 

ing or any other work needful in the parish or 
diocese. It would restore completely the lost or- 
der of the diaconate. There would be no crying 
need of teachers or parish workers. 

Bishop Doane's Sincerity and Consistency. 

There is no doubt as to the sincerity and im- 
plicit faith of Bishop Doane. He had braved 
financial ruin and an ecclesiastical trial for the 
principles enunciated. Nor was his attitude at 
that time inconsistent with his former views re- 
garding the Sunday-school, as many charged. In 
the practical exploitation of his parochial enter- 
prises the institution had been just what he had 
mirrored it in the enunciation of his ideals. It 
had been the preparatory step toward the more 
general revival and popularization of the cate- 
chetical service — a gathering together in the 
open church of parents and Godparents, of chil- 
dren and servants for instruction according to 
the rubric. He had made the Catechism to be 
what he wrote it should be. Under the ardent 
inspiration of his pedagogic genius it was lu- 
minously pregnant, not as a completed text 
book, but as a syllabus of instruction. By its 
tacit guidance the learners were most lucidly 
and interestingly taught the things a Christian 
ought to know and believe to his soul's health. 
By the well-springs running fresh and clear 



232 The Sunday-School. 

from the heart of the Gospels they sat at his feet 
and quaffed what burned in their hearts within 
them, making them always remember what it 
was to follow the example of our Savior Christ 
and to be made like unto Him. 

Views Anachronistic. But there is also no 
doubt that Bishop Doane's looking at the thing 
as it is partook to a certain extent of the nature 
of an anachronism. In the first place, the ru- 
bric expressly commanding the presence of 
three Godparents at baptism was almost as 
much of a dead letter as it is in the beginning of 
the twentieth century. When the rubrical trio 
of sponsors were present, they were not usually 
inspired with the zeal and purposes that would 
enable them to lay claim to the title of God- 
parent. Too often, when actually present, they 
consisted of persons pressed into service for 
form's sake, one being the sexton or some utility 
officer about the parish. Then, too, the state of 
family training and of the patria potestas in 
general had for some years been such as to 
stamp the catechismal rubric, commanding the 
parents to order the children to church for in- 
struction, equally antiquated and inoperative 
with the baptismal rubric. Other essential ele- 
ments of the system idealized had long disap- 
peared out of sight and practice. The parson of 



Sunday-School and Memorial Papers. 233 

the middle nineteenth century was no longer in 
the position occupied by him of the sixteenth 
as described by George Herbert. 

Views of Other Contributors to the Memo- 
rial Papers. Other contributors to the Memo- 
rial Papers touched upon the Sunday-school in 
their views regarding what might conduce to the 
better understanding of the Church among other 
Christian bodies and what might beget a closer 
relationship, if not community, between the va- 
rious fractions of the Christian hosts. In these 
the institution was generally treated as a well- 
established legitimate means of religious work. 
Most of these writers recommended its wider de- 
velopment as well as the broader adaptation of 
the Church's liturgy and other appointments to 
its use. 



CHAPTEK X. 



THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD. 



Denominational Sunday-School Work in 
1860. The years immediately preceding the 
Civil War were years of wonderful Sunday- 
school activity on the part of various denomi- 
nations of Protestant Christians and especially 
on the part of the American Sunday-School 
Union, which was still aided in its immense in- 
terdenominational work by not a few prominent 
and wealthy churchmen. In the year 1860 no 
less than two thousand and ninety-one new Sun- 
day-schools were organized by the missionaries 
of this Union, enrolling over two hundred thou- 
sand pupils. Most of them were spread over the 
Middle West and the South, though a consid- 
erable number w T ere begun in New England. 

Destitution in New England. 1 The extremes 
of Puritan practice (and particularly the 

1 Report of American S. S. Union for 1860. 
234 






The Civil War Period. 235 

opposition to the Sunday-school) and the con- 
sequent reaction had left certain portion of 
New England in a sorry plight spiritually. 
Where once were flourishing evangelical 
churches, were then found, not unfrequently 
with but little change in the number of inhabi- 
tants, no active ecclesiastical organization what- 
ever, no stated gatherings for public worship, no 
Sunday-school, but only the deserted sanctuary. 
There were some places where not even the 
memory of former church privileges exerted a 
hallowing influence. In certain destitute sec- 
tions among (not foreign settlers) but descend 
ants of Puritans, religion was proscribed. Ef- 
forts to establish Sunday-schools or religious 
worship met with most determined hostility. 
The school-house was closed against the would- 
be teachers. The children were driven from the 
room, when they had actually assembled there. 

Work of Noted Sunday-School Leaders. 

The untowardness of these conditions was keen- 
ly felt by loyal New Englanders. Sunday- 
school leaders like Dr. H. Clay Trumbull ap- 
plied themselves to the problem with rare judg- 
ment and skill. The weed-grown sod was soon 
broken and turned for the harvests that ripened 
later under the regular clergy. 



236 The Sunday-School. 

The Sunday-School in the South, Where 
Slavery Was Humanely Conducted. Through- 
out the South the Sunday-school entered as an 
important factor into the vexing slavery ques- 
tion. In the many sections, where plantations 
were managed with the orderly and humane 
regimen of family life, religious instruction for 
the slaves was not uncommon. The Sunday- 
school, especially, was consistently applied and 
diligently operated. The sons and daughters 
of the best families often took up the work of 
teaching the little blacks. And sometimes even 
the children of well-favored parentage sat in the 
same classes with these by the side of their elder 
brothers and sisters, who taught. 

Where Slavery Was Cruel. Where, bow- 
ever, the management of the slave communities 
in general was entrusted to overseers entirely, 
and little that was bumane characterized the ex- 
istence of the unfortunate negroes, the religious 
destitution was appalling. Into such conditions 
the ardor of the Sunday-school missionaries in- 
jected itself with strenuous earnestness. At first 
it was difficult and somewhat dangerous work. 
Not a few cases have been recorded of attempts 
at violent repression. The idea of effecting a 
development of the enslaved race with higher 
ideals of personal fitness than those held even by 



The Civil War Period. 237 

many whites was nauseating to the dominant 
forces. And more than one bold Sunday-school 
organizer was deluged under the public pump 
and elsewhere with evidences of popular ill will. 
Nevertheless, the crusade was persistently 
urged. In the year 1860 nearly four hundred 
new Sunday-schools were organized and four 
hundred more were aided. Nearly six thousand 
teachers were helped that year by the American 
Sunday-School Union in their efforts to uplift 
some forty thousand children of the South. 

Value of the Sunday-School to Slaves. As 

this was only a portion of the work done by 
Protestant Christians without our Church, and 
as the Sunday-school practically furnished the 
only educational advantages enjoyed by the 
youthful slaves (we may say the only real evi- 
dences of their value as human souls), we must 
regard the institution as a factor of peculiar po- 
tency in the amelioration of the unfortunate 
evils necessarily associated with slavery . 

And this benign activity was redoubled in the 
years following the Civil War, when the general 
destitution of the Southern states was pathetic. 
Too much, therefore, cannot be said of the help- 
fulness of the Sunday-school in the years of re- 
adjustment. 



238 The Sunday-School. 

The Upper Mississippi Valley and the Mid- 
dle West. Another and perhaps even more 
striking chapter is to be written of the institu- 
tion's influence in the expansion of the Upper 
Mississippi Valley and the Middle West. The 
period of which we write, though one of wonder- 
ful development, was still characterized By pio- 
neer, if not primitive, conditions of life. The 
national highway over the Cumberland Moun- 
tains, to be sure, had been extended some years 
before to the Mississippi. Various common- 
wealths in this region had already burdened 
themselves with staggering debts to extend the 
fast developing systems of railroads and canals. 
People from the Eastern States mingled with 
immigrants from foreign shores had been seek- 
ing new abodes in this section by the thousands. 
Yet the following picture was not untrue to the 
situation at this stage of the development. 

A Representative New Settlement. A repre- 
sentative new settlement in the neighborhood we 
have selected extends three or four miles in 
every direction. The settlers are generally 
farmers. They have taken up from one to two 
hundred acres of land apiece. Each settler has 
made a clearing on one corner of his tract, 
where he has built a log cabin for his family and 
a kind of rude shed, which he calls a barn, for 



The Civil War Period. 239 

his cattle. Every year or two he musters cour- 
age to add a few more acres to his clearing. All 
the rest is unbroken forest. It is perhaps a mile 
through the woods to his nearest neighbor. 
Here with his wife, and children he works 
on year after year in a hard struggle for 
existence. He raises his own meat, grain, 
and vegetables and gets along with as few 
articles of clothing and groceries as at all 
possible. For the few articles he must have he 
goes off some ten or fifteen miles to a country 
store and obtains them by barter for the prod- 
ucts of his farm. Money he has none. There 
may be in his settlement twelve or fifteen such 
families, each living in a similar isolated ex- 
istence. For the first few years in such a neigh- 
borhood it is a hand to hand fight with hunger, 
a struggle for bread. But in the course of a sin- 
gle generation this neighborhood becomes by 
the enterprise of these hardy and thrifty la- 
borers and by the natural growth and progress 
of events a rich, populous and influential com- 
munity. And that community will then have a 
character for religion or irreligion very much 
according to the leaven at work among them in 
the early stages of growth. 

The Sunday-School and the Family Instincts 
of the Settlers. Then, as to the settlers, they 



240 The Sunday-School. 

are of the most heterogeneous character. One is 
from New England, another from New York, a 
third from Pennsylvania. There are Germans, 
Irish, Scotch, English, Danes, Swedes. There 
are Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Oon- 
gregationalists, Episcopalians, Romanists, Uni- 
versalists, Mormons and infidels of every shade. 
There are, it may be, no three families in the 
settlement of the same creed and race. Yet they 
are all men with the ordinary instincts of hu- 
manity. They all love their children and are 
willing to make sacrifices for their welfare. 
Among such people the world over the family 
tie is peculiarly strong. The Sunday-school 
comes to them as a boon for those whom they 
love better than their farms. It comes as an 
agency in ivhich they can themselves take a 
part, and by taking part in it they are them- 
selves benefitted. It is a moral and religious 
work in which they can all unite. It is the only 
work in ivhich they can so unite. Even infi- 
dels in such settlements have been known to 
send their children to the schools and help other- 
wise for the sake of the temporal benefits which 
the Sunday-school brings. 

Work of the American Union. Years before 
the advent of any clergy these schools were 
planted broadcast over the pioneer country, be- 



The Civil War Period. 241 

ginning in a most economical way with the 
hearty co-operation of all the development of 
parish life. The American Sunday-School 
Union alone started in one year nearly two 
thousand and aided some twenty-five hundred 
more, engaging nearly twenty-nine thousand 
teachers to instruct some one hundred and 
eighty thousand pupils. Most of these schools 
(there were few exceptions) afterward grew 
into Presbyterian or Congregational church or- 
ganizations. Other Sunday-School Unions, 
operated by religious denominations, prepared 
fields for their own organizations. 

Negligence of the Church. The Protestant 
Episcopal Church in those years did nothing in 
the way of this kind of work. Her General 
Sunday School Union spent its money in issu- 
ing doctrinal publications to offset the influence 
of the Evangelical Knowledge Society. Many a 
Church family on the frontiers, loathe to lose 
her time-honored privileges, out of love for their 
children were forced to join some other reli- 
gious organization. And up to the present day 
she has labored in these regions under great 
disadvantages, often despairing of gaining firm 
foothold where another religious body, strength- 
ened by some of her best blood, flourishes. 



242 The Sunday- School. 

Inopportuneness of the Agitation for Tradi- 
tional Conditions. Whatever may be the view 
regarding the general status of the Sunday- 
school, there can be no doubt that the agitation 
for the traditional conditions came at an inop- 
portune time for the Church. With a strong 
central organization the dominant spirit f>i 
Bishop Hobart had in a most practical way at 
very small cost hewn out of the chaos of the 
revolutionary period fairly strong foundations. 
On them had been reared what began to shape 
itself into an harmonious, much-enveloping 
structure. Temporary as well as traditional 
means had been operated. Jury-mast as well as 
main-mast had enabled the Church to sweep on 
her course with dignity and effective progress. 
Now came the time of great expansion. The 
crisis of the Civil War touched the heart of the 
nation. As in all such crises the religious forces 
were stirred to their deepest centers. With the 
tremendous progress in the new and untried re- 
gions of the country came again and even more 
urgently the need of temporary as well as reg- 
ular means of teaching the Gospel. In the ab- 
sence now of a strong center to promote the 
former the Church could not break much soil 
for sowing and hence lagged behind in these 
regions. 



The Civil War Period. 243 

What the Sunday-School Might Have Ac- 
complished. There was no contention at all as 
to the advantages of the institution in such 
places, nor as to the advisability of putting it 
into action. With the keen practical judgment 
and the practical, as well as idealizing, catho- 
licity of a Hobart beginnings might have been 
made as in the early period of reconstruction at 
but little cost without taxing the struggling 
General Missionary Society. And the Church 
without doubt would not have been so weak in 
comparison with the other Christian bodies in 
the later period of development. But the con- 
troversy in the populous Eastern and Southern 
states emasculated the general Sunday-school 
activity and the seed was unsown. 

Wisdom of the Church of England. The 

Mother Church of England, buffeted by similar 
storms, manifested in the emergency great prac- 
tical wisdom. In 1843 was founded the Church 
of England Sunday-School Institute, which at 
once began extensive operations in alliance with 
its powerful forerunner, the National Society 
for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the 
Principles of the Established Church. 

The specific aim of the Institute, which en- 
joyed the patronage of the archbishops and 
bishops of the Church in Great Britain, Ireland 



244 The Sunday-School. 

and the colonies, was the extension and improve- 
ment of Church of England Sunday-Schools. 
Together with the National Society it spent mil- 
lions in this pursuit 

(1) by establishing a center of communica- 
tion at London, splendidly manned by a Gen- 
eral Secretary, various general and district or- 
ganizing secretaries and other officers ; 

(2) by promoting the establishment of 
branch or local associations ; 

(3) by providing publications useful to Sun- 
day-school teachers and scholars ; 

(4) by providing experienced visitors or dep- 
utation agents to attend meetings of Sunday- 
school teachers for the purpose of giving lec- 
tures and training lessons ; 

(5) by generally helping poor parishes or 
neighborhoods in the formation and mainte- 
nance of Sunday-schools. 

In this way many of the rising generations 
were kept within the Church. 

Activity of Low Churchmen in the East. 

While little was done on the American frontier 
by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the years 
before and after the Civil War, Sunday-school 
work was pushed with persistent, assiduous en- 
ergy in the older regions. It was almost en- 
tirely confined to the Evangelical members of 



The Civil War Period. 245 

the Church. In fact, the Low Church move- 
ment in its elementary phases was essentially 
and confessedly a Sunday-school campaign with 
all the Sunday-school enthusiasm of the early 
Evangelical leaders. Laymen of the best ele- 
ments of our social life again threw themselves 
into the movement, making sacrifice of their 
time, talents and money to ensure its success. 

Representative Examples. Two or three act- 
ual examples may illustrate more clearly than a 
general statement the progress of the movement 
in which, as in the earlier days, many a strong 
parish sprang up to win numerous souls to the 
gospel and to give birth to other fecund centers 
of Church life. 

A Lady of Philadelphia and Her Achieve- 
ments. 2 A lady of one of the first families of 
the nation from a fashionable parish of Phila- 
delphia began a Bible Class and Sunday-school 
at the Church hospital in the northeastern or 
Kensington district of the city soon after the 
Civil War. In a few years it became a prolific 
agency for good among the toiling masses, then 
beginning to crowd the famous mill district. 
It remains today the largest school of the 
Church. From it has developed a large, strong 

2 Miss Catherine C. Biddle. 



246 The Sunday-School. 

parish. Out of its loins sprang other schools 
teeming with various parochial activities. 
Mainly through its fostering influences there 
came into being a wonderful Boys' Club (now 
an adjunct of the diocesan Church Club), a 
Savings Bank, a Day Nursery, a thriving and 
splendidly equipped Light House Restaurant — 
a real workingmen's club, inculcating total ab- 
stinence — together Avith numberless means of at- 
tracting and keeping from temptation the young 
and old. In the localities touched by these 
quickening forces! the Church's influence is 
paramount and the loyal churchman points with 
pride to their achievements for the Master. 

Her Sister's Work. 3 Not long after the in- 
ception of this great undertaking a sister of its 
founder began a similar effort in a small store 
in the same neighborhood a little further South. 
This, too, soon grew into a pregnant center of 
Church activity. Both devoted daughters of 
the church continued their strenuous career un- 
til nearly eighty years old. 

Energy of a Gentleman of Pittsburg. 4 About 
the same time a distinguished gentleman of St. 
Andrew's parish, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, threw 

8 Miss Elizabeth N. Biddle. 
* Mr. Felix M. Brunot. 



The Civil War Period. 247 

the influence and substance of his family into 
the work, of St. James' Church, a struggling 
parish of respectable working people. He and 
his wife were not only in their pew at every 
service, but they were present at the two ses- 
sions of the Sunday-school, so planned that each 
child in the neighborhood might be reached. He 
himself superintended the school, while his wife 
took charge of the large infant department. 
There was so little time between the morning 
service and the afternoon session that they 
brought their luncheons and ate them in the 
Sunday-school room. 

Sundays at St. James', Pittsburg. Happy 
Sundays these were for all associated with them. 
What vital interest this loyal son of the Church 
took in his work is apparent from his papers 
recently published. Among them was found a 
large bundle of notes dealing with the enterprise 
at St. James'. A package of small cards tells 
the story of the Sundays. At the top of each 
was pasted the Collect of the day. Beneath 
were the hymns and collects selected for the 
service and after these the headings of talks to 
the children. These talks were chiefly on right 
living, the Christian year and missions. The 
whole is a marvel of system and conden- 
sation. The Christmas and Easter festivals 



248 The Sunday-School. 

were famous at this parish. For them 
the gifted superintendent wrote carols. But the 
distinguishing mark of St. James' of the sixties 
was the enthusiasm for missions. And the Sun- 
day-school, though composed mainly of poor 
children, took the lead in pointing out certain 
important fields and in concentrating the inter- 
est of the Church at large in them, financially 
as well as otherwise. 

The Rev. Dr. Richard Newton. Among the 
many clergy of this period famed for their Sun- 
day-school enterprise was the Rev. Dr. Richard 
Newton, styled "the prince of children's preach- 
ers" by Spurgeon. Connected with the parish 
of Old St. John's, Northern Liberties, Phila- 
delphia, in his younger days, he was powerfully 
influenced by the personality of the Rev. Dr. 
George Boyd, in whose church he performed his 
first ministerial duties. The burden of his life's 
work was divided between Old St. Paul's and 
the Church of the Epiphany, in both of which 
the Sunday-school traditions, made famous by 
the former rectors, were consistently followed. 

In the work of Dr. Newton at the latter parish 
we may find the climax of the Evangelical Sun- 
day-school movement. His Sunday afternoon 
Children's Church recalled the popular in- 
terest in Whittingham's former services at New 
York City and far surpassed them in the emo- 



The Civil War Period. 249 

tional fervor and enthusiasm of the great con- 
gregations. Catechism Sundays, when the 
Church Catechism set to music by one of the 
Sunday-school teachers was chanted or sung by 
the children, were just as widely popular. 
Many people preempted seats in the galleries 
for these services by staying after Morning 
Prayer and eating their lunches in the church. 

Unique features characterized the gatherings 
on Missionary Sundays. To maintain the prac- 
tical interest of the children and adults there 
were often displayed some tangible objects of 
missionary activity, such as a war club, a piece 
of pottery or some other implement of war or 
peace made by the people, to whom missionaries 
were sent. A famous piece was the miniature 
of a ship made from a spar of the original, 
which was called the John Williams after a 
martyred missionary, whose career the children 
were kept studying for two years. This min- 
iature was paraded up and down the aisles of 
the church during the offertory and returned to 
harbor filled with the offerings of the congre- 
gation. 

Dr. Newton, as editor of the publications of 
the American Sunday School Union for many 
years, superintended the issue of numerous 
wholesome books for children and was himself 
a prolific writer for the youth. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE AMERICAN CHURCH SUNDAY SCHOOL 
INSTITUTE. 

Individualism and Parochialism of the Work 
Before 1870. Little of the work done to pro- 
mote Church Sunday-schools for a number of 
years prior to 1870 was under other than pri- 
vate or individual auspices. Few of the schools 
were satisfied with the literature from sources 
wholly under Church influences. The publica- 
tions of the American Sunday-school Union, 
then under the editorship of the Rev. Dr. Rich- 
ard Newton, were again largely used. What 
was deprecated as parochialism or Sunday- 
school ism was to be expected under such con- 
ditions without the centralizing forces of a gen- 
eral Church organization or system. And such 
an organization was prayed for by more than 
one loyal churchman of that period. 



American Sunday-School Institute. 251 

Influence of Mr. George C. Thomas for 
Centralization. It began to materialize in 
1870, from which time for a number of years 
the general Church Sunday-school forces center 
around the personality of Mr. George O. 
Thomas, then as now the Sunday-school super- 
intendent at the Church of the Holy Apostles, 
Philadelphia. Mr. Thomas in his younger days 
has been zealously associated in the business of 
the Master at Old St. Paul's (as well as in 
that of mercantile life) with Mr. Jay Cooke. 
Conscious that much was being lost to the 
Church by the lack of co-operation and co-or- 
dination, he addressed a meeting of the Teach- 
ers' Association of his school, in January, 1870, 
suggesting correspondence with the Evangelical 
Sunday-schools of the Church to "form a society 
for the mutual encouragement of those engaged 
in the great work of teaching the young and 
for consultation as to the best methods of carry- 
ing it on in connection with our own Church to 
bring before the people the cause of Sunday- 
schools and to enlist for them that feeling of 
interest and attention, which they certainly 
ought to have." 

The Pennsylvania Diocesan Sunday-School 
Society. On Feburary 15th, 1870, at the Church 
of the Holy Trinity, the organization sprang into 



252 The Sunday-School. 

being with Mr. Charles E. Lex as President 
and Mr. George C. Thomas as Secretary. 
Among the very first topics discussed were, 
"How can we best interest children in the 
church service?" "How can we prevent the 
loss of children between Sunday-school and 
Church?" Sixteen Philadelphia schools were 
represented at the first meeting. In 1871, Mr. 
George C. Thomas was elected President, when 
seventy-two schools were enrolled with some 
twenty-five thousand scholars. This organiza- 
tion was at first limited in its scope. It was 
called the Sunday School Association of the 
Diocese of Pennsylvania and renewed the work 
of the earlier Sunday And Adult or diocesan 
societies. But larger ideas were in the minds 
of its promoters. 

The American Church Sunday-School In- 
stitute. In 1875 the American Church Sun- 
day School Institute was projected under the 
presidency of the Rt. Bev. W. B. Stevens, the 
Bishop of Pennsylvania. In 1877 representa- 
tives of the Bishop of Long Island and the Sun- 
day-school Societies of New York and Penn- 
sylvania met to arrange a scheme of Uniform 
Lessons to be introduced into the schools of the 
Church at large. This scheme has gradually 
been recommended and adopted by the author- 



American Sunday-School Institute. 253 

ities in the various dioceses and missionary 
jurisdictions of the Church, so that nearly all 
have more or less introduced it. In 1884 the 
Institute was officially organized. 

Similarity to the Church of England Insti- 
tute. In some few particulars the American 
Church Sunday School Institute has followed 
the guidance of the kindred organization in the 
Church of England. Various institutes have 
been fostered in different dioceses. These have 
afforded great help and encouragement to 
teachers and workers. Diocesan associations 
have been quite generally formed to aid the 
institute work and the diocesan Sunday-school 
enterprise in general. In some cases the earlier 
societies were revived. 

Missionary Endeavor. Missionary enter- 
prise meanwhile has not been forgotten. Sun- 
day-school auxiliaries to the Board of Missions 
have sprung up rapidly, stimulating the mis- 
sionary spirit in every section of the Church. 
The Sunday-schools in their ordinary offerings 
as well as in their enormous contributions dur- 
ing the special seasons of Advent and Lent have 
been raising quite a large fraction of the total 
sum expended by the Board of Missions. In all 
this work the Rev. Dr. H. L. Duhring of Phil- 



254 The Sunday-School. 

adelphia among others has rendered important 
service to the Church. 

The American Church Sunday-School Maga- 
zine. In 1885 began the publication of the 
American Church Sunday School Magazine, 
the Institute's official organ. It is a worthy 
successor to the early Family Visitor and Chil- 
dren s Magazine. A comparison with the Sun- 
day School Magazine published in 1827, shows 
clearly the degree of progress maintained by 
the modern American magazine literature. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE MODERN SUNDAY-SCHOOL COMMISSION 
MOVEMENT. 

During the past half-decade, a most remark- 
able movement has been spreading with reju- 
venating life through the Sunday-schools, first 
of the Church, and then, following in radiating 
circles from that origin, through the schools of 
all Christian bodies outside of the Episcopal 
Church, even affecting individual schools of the 
Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Roman 
Catholics. 

This new movement from its inception em- 
phasized pedagogical efficiency and improved 
methods of education, just as the former move- 
ment emphasized the spiritualizing power of the 
teacher, and the teacher's influence upon the 
lives and character of the scholars. 

The fire was originally kindled in the spring 

of 1898, when the Bishop of ISTew York called 
255 



256 The Sunday-School. 

an informal meeting in the Church of the 
Epiphany, Manhattan, to consider the possi- 
bility of improvement in the schools of his dio- 
cese. The outcome was that in the autumn the 
Bishop announced to his Diocesan Convention 
the appointment of a Sunday-school Commis- 
sion to examine into and suggest methods of bet- 
terment in the religious education of the young 
in that diocese. ~No limit was set to its scope 
or plan of work. The Convention ratified the 
appointment and voted an appropriation of not 
over $1,000.00 for the expenses of the Commis- 
sion for the first year. 

The Commission, as first appointed, num- 
bered fifteen members. At its meeting for or- 
ganization, held in the See House, in October, 
1898, the Rev. Pascal Harrower, to whose de- 
termined endeavor the Commissison really owed 
its genesis, was most properly elected its Chair- 
man, and ever since then has been foremost in 
furthering the movement. The Rev. Wm. Wal- 
ter Smith, M. A., M. D., then Vicar in the Par- 
ish of the Heavenly Rest, New York, was elected 
Secretary, and has held that position ever since. 

Great things were evidently expected from 
the Commission by the clergy of the Diocese. 
Within a month after its organization rectors 
wrote for suggestions, "Commission Lesson 
Books," etc., when as yet the Commission had 



Sunday-School Commission Movement. 257 

scarcely secured its bearings or determined the 
best ways in which to help the schools. Its pre- 
liminary undertaking was a campaign of edu- 
cation, arousing the schools and the teachers to 
a realization of the needs for betterment. The 
shibboleth of the new movement was that "the 
Sunday-school was primarily a school/' and 
therefore it must avail itself of modern methods 
of education and organization. 

From this view-point it sought to adopt the 
best methods of the secular day school wisely 
and practically to the Sunday-school. It sought 
to emphasize the forgotten fact that the child's 
mind is a unit, and can be educated only as 
such; that religious education, both in relation 
to knowledge and character, is only a part of 
general education; and that, as such, it cannot 
either accomplish results nor win respect if con- 
ducted by methods obsolete in day school prac- 
tice, unpedagogical and wasteful of energy and 
interest, ignoring the child's real needs in his 
development. It did not seek to displace the 
Joint Diocesan Committee, an influential factor 
of much more venerable lineage and prestige, 
but to supplement it, entering a somewhat differ- 
ent field, that of education rather than of inspir- 
ation. 

Public lectures to arouse interest were held. 
Lectures to teachers were given in St. Bartholo- 



258 The Sunday-School. 

mew's Church, by the highest educators in the 
colleges and seminaries of the country, on "The 
Principles of Religious Education." Lectures 
on the life of Jesus Christ and on the life and 
labors of St. Paul were added. The following 
year teachers' training classes were established, 
covering every phase of Bible and Prayer Book 
study, child-study and religious pedagogy. The 
third year, extension classes were arranged, 
located in various churches, under the auspices 
of the Commission. Beading courses were 
drawn up, with recommended books for study, 
final examinations and diplomas. Some three 
hundred teachers in all were definitely aided to 
improved work and knowledge by these several 
means. 

The next step was the provision of suitable 
lesson books. To this the Commission was prac- 
tically driven, in spite of its disinclination to 
multiply existing manuals. The very principles 
of Education, the acceptance of the pedagogical 
axioms of a subject-graded curriculum, the rec- 
ognized efficiency of the source method as 
adopted universally in secular education, com- 
pelled the production of manuals to meet the 
requirements, as none were to be found in the 
Church to fulfil these principles. Still being 
unwilling to become a publishing house or to be 
involved in financial considerations which might 



Sunday-School Commission Movement. 259 

cast odium upon its work for the Church, the 
matter of publication of manuals, prepared by 
a lesson committee of the Commission, was 
assigned to outside publishers already in busi- 
ness. The first books were eagerly welcomed, 
and, thus encouraged, a series of twenty-eight 
manuals has been put forth, according to a defi- 
nite plan or curriculum. Most of these courses 
have been on varied aspects of Bible Study, 
though the Catechism and Church History are 
among the new ones coming out this autumn. 
Two individual members of the Commission 
have unofficially published additional courses, 
which fill in in a subject-graded curriculum at 
least temporarily, each seven books, thus adding 
fourteen to the official list. Some of the books 
reached the surprising circulation of twenty- 
three thousand copies in less than two years. 

In connection with its work, the New York 
Commission has gathered the most complete 
Sunday-school exhibit to be found in existence 
anywhere, some nine thousand lesson manuals, 
books, maps, pictures, models, etc., which is per- 
manently located at the See House, and has been 
moved to Philadelphia for the Religious Edu- 
cation Association Convention, to Richfield 
Springs for the Summer Conference in 1904, 
and at Boston for two weeks, during the General 
Convention in October of the same year. 



260 The Sunday-School. 

But the results which the Commission has 
been permitted to effect in the Diocese of New 
York are the very least of its influence. At the 
very birth of the New York Commission, letters 
began to pour in from every diocese in the 
Church, at home and abroad. The movement 
as a Movement was recognized as filling an im- 
perative lack in the Church. Other Commis- 
sions were formed. It is interesting and will 
prove undoubtedly helpful to the clergy and 
Bishops to note some of the significant deduc- 
tions from the tabulation of the data sent to the 
Secretary of the Federation of Commissions and 
Institutes, in response to a questionaire recently 
sent out for the compilation of statistics in the 
Church Almanacs. 

DATE OF ORGANIZATION OF COMMISSIONS. 

1898 — New York Commission. 

1899 — Long Island Commission, Connecticut 
Auxiliary, Michigan Commission. 

1900 — Los Angeles Commission, Missouri 
Commission. 

1901 — California Commission, Massachu- 
setts Commission, New Hampshire Commission. 

1902 — Rhode Island Commission, Vermont 
Commission, Ottawa (Can.) Committee. 

1903 — Chicago Commission, Iowa Commis- 
sion, Pittsburgh Institute. 

1904 — Central New York Commission, In- 



Sunday-School Commission Movement. 261 

dianapolis Commission, Ohio Commission, New 
Jersey Commission, North Dakota Commission, 
Southern Ohio Commission, South Carolina 
Commission, Southern Virginia Commission, 
Western New York Commission, Western Mas- 
sachusetts Commission, Fredericton (Can.) 
Committee, Milwaukee Commission. 

The impetus of the movement the present 
year has outstripped all other years, and it is 
yet growing. At least half-a-dozen Bishops are 
at this moment contemplating the appointment 
of similar Commissions for work in their own 
dioceses. 

MODE OF FORMATION OF COMMISSIONS AND 
INSTITUTES. 

By appointment of Bishop and Convention, 
ten. 

By appointment of Bishop alone, four. 

By election of Convention, under motion, 
seven. 

By self-formation, institutes chiefly, five. 

Thus it is seen that out of twenty-six organ- 
izations reporting, seventeen are the official rep- 
resentatives of their respective dioceses, while 
four more were appointed by the Ordinary, who 
undoubtedly has official right to make such pro- 
vision for Sunday-school betterment. Only five 
are in any sense of the term unofficial. 



262 The Sunday-School. 

The membership of the Commissions is an- 
other important and significant point. Most of 
them are emphatically limited as to member- 
ship. This ranges from three to fifteen. A tab- 
ulation of membership is given. 

Organizations limited in membership, from 
3 to 15, twenty-one. 

All inclusive — rectors, officers, teachers — six. 

All clerical in membership, six. 

Clerical and lay members, eighteen. 

Having associate members (New York only), 
one. 

Admitting women (Massachusetts the only 
Commission), eight. 

Thus the movement tends to the selection of a 
few well-trained and skilled Sunday-school 
workers, usually priests, with a proportion of 
about one-third laymen, to map out and suggest 
lines of improvement in each diocese. It is 
strange that only one Commission (Massachu- 
setts) admits women to membership, although 
they form the major portion of the teaching 
staff. Perhaps it is because most of the Com- 
missions are representative of the Diocesan Con- 
vention, which is composed solely of males. 
Associate membership would, however, allow for 
the admission of women, and it would seem that 
their advice and co-operation would prove most 
advantageous. 



Sunday-School Commission Movement. 263 

If aggressive and progressive work is to be 
wrought by Commissions, funds for the sinews 
of war will be required in each diocese. How is 
this money obtained ? The New York Commis- 
sion received an appropriation of $1,000 the 
first year from the funds of the Convention of 
the Diocese. The second year is was given but 
$500. The third year and thereafter, it received 
nothing, the Treasurer holding that it was illegal 
to devote Convention monies to such an object. 
And yet it would appear that Official Diocesan 
Commissions, the committees and creatures of 
Conventions, should receive proper funds to 
prosecute their work. Four Commissions are 
so supported, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
Western New York, and Southern Virginia. A 
glance at the stated sources of incomes shows up 
thus: 

Donations and subscriptions alone from indi- 
viduals and parishes, seven. 

Offerings at teachers' and public meetings 
alone, four. 

Definite assessment on Sunday-schools, two. 

Assessments on churches and collections at 
public meetings, one. 

Appropriation from Diocesan Conventions, 
four. 

Membership fees (a large institute), one. 

It would seem that the fairest way would be 



264 The Sunday-School. 

a definite Diocesan Convention appropriation, 
which -would cover the entire work, under which 
of course each parish is really paying a propor- 
tionate assessment ; or in lieu of that, a similar 
definite assessment, based on the ability of the 
parish, made directly by the Bishop and the 
Commission on each parish in the See. 

There is somewhat of a distinction to be 
drawn between a Commission and an Institute, 
which will explain in part the rapid progress of 
the former movement. The Institutes stand 
rather for inspiration, while the Commissions, 
taking their cue from the advances made in sec- 
ular schools along the lines of child-study and 
pedagogy, have laid particular stress on educa- 
tion. Neither organization intends by the em- 
phasis laid on one phase of the Sunday-school 
regime to neglect or minimize the other phase. 
It simply chances that the older organizations, 
the Institute movement, so wide in its extent, so 
rich in its beneficient fruitage of intensified spir- 
itual zeal, promulgated with such efficient fidel- 
ity by the leaders of the Joint Diocesan Commit- 
tee, and especially by its devoted head, Dr. 
Duhring, has gathered teachers together in 
local centers for the deepening of the spir- 
itual life and missionary fervor, for the 
particular study of particular lessons, and 
for quarterly or yearly mass meetings, sim- 



Sunday-School Commission Movement. 265 

ilar to conventions. Its labors have been 
productive of great good, and will con- 
tinue to be, even in far great degree as time 
goes on. The Commission movement, however, 
stands for the principles enunciated at its out- 
set, which emphasizes child-study and the appli- 
cation of modern Educational psychology and 
pedagogy to religious education. While never 
intending to put spiritual fervor in the back- 
ground, it sought to call attention to betterment 
in teacher-training, in grading and lesson man- 
uals, and in Sunday-school organization. The 
relation of the Institutes to the Commissions in 
the future will be that of local Women's Auxil- 
iaries to the General Missionary Board. Most 
of the Institutes are confined to individual cities, 
a local banding together of clergy and teachers 
for mutual co-operation and interests. The Com- 
missions are broader in scope and represent the 
Diocese itself. Usually the Institutes are di- 
rectly under and affiliated with the Commis- 
sions, local branches as it were. Thus in Cali- 
fornia, we have the Commission, diocesan in 
scope, and under it Institutes in San Francisco, 
San Jose and San Joaquin. In Western New 
York, there have existed for many years Insti- 
tutes or Associations in Buffalo and Rochester. 
Now under the newly-formed Commission, these 
Institutes are placed as subordinate local repre- 



266 The Sunday-School. 

sentatives or feeders to the Commission, the rec- 
ognized official organization of the Diocese. So 
it has been in Ohio, so in Michigan, etc. Iowa, 
Massachusetts, and Chicago Commissions are 
ah initio forming Institutes to get into direct 
touch with the individual teachers and schools. 
Thus the older movement bears its part in the 
progression of the age. 

The Commission movement is the latest step 
in the evolution of the Sunday-school. It has 
come to stay. While assuredly even it cannot 
be the highest step that progress and develop- 
ment will undoubtedly attain in the present cen- 
tury in the domain of religious education, it is 
the present day step, paramount during this 
decade. Already it reaches from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, from the north to the south. It has 
touched Canada and England and Australia. 
Thirty Commissions and Institutes are already 
in the new Federation, and each month wit- 
nesses additions to this number. The National 
Religious Education Association is the direct 
outcome of the New York Commission's Printed 
Lectures on The Principles of Religious Educa- 
tion. Whatever the future of religious educa- 
tion may be in the Church, the secular school, 
and the Home, the Sunday-School Commission 
Movement must bear large share in the founda 
tion-building. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

COURSES OF STUDY AND TEXT BOOKS. 

Unique Place of Religious Instruction in the 
Evolution of Pedagogy. The twentieth cen- 
tury pedagogue is apt to think that his science 
of pedagogy in its present developed stage (tak- 
ing this now from its modern point of view), 
has ascended through a series of evolutionary 
processes, in which each stage from the begin- 
ning shows a distinct advance on the preceding 
in point of methods and material. It has more 
than once been affirmed that the first educa- 
tional stages are to the latest much as the rudi- 
mentary phases of life in the general theory of 
evolution are to the higher types of creatures. 
Whatever may be true of secular pedagogy, it 
is distinctly not true of Sunday-schooling. Just 
as some still differentiate man as a religious 
creature from the general scheme of evolution, 
so must we differentiate religious (and more 
267 



268 The Sunday-School. 

especially Sunday-school) pedagogy. That the 
religious instruction of the early nineteenth 
century was of a type, compared to which that 
of the closing year is a very low form, is evi- 
dent from even a casual examination of the data 
both as to the methods and material. 

High State of Sunday-School Teaching. 

The high state of organization everywhere pres- 
ent in the early American Sunday-school has 
already been touched upon. The ruling prin- 
ciple was careful, consistent gradation in all 
stages of development, so that the teaching 
might at all times exactly fit the receptivity of 
the pupil. The personal relationship between 
teacher and scholar, which so largely breaks into 
class gradation of the present day, then ope- 
rated only in keeping teacher and fit scholars 
together in the various stages of promotion. 

Material for Instruction Compared. It is to 

be noted at the outset that the general status of 
the material for instruction was not far dif- 
ferent in aim and purpose to that of the present 
day. It is generally considered a well estab- 
lished fact that the early Sunday-school teach- 
ing was largely secular in aim; that the chil- 
dren learned their letters and went to Sunday- 
school for that purpose mainly. 



Courses of Study and Text Books. 269 

Aim of Early Teaching Not Secular. This is 
hardly a fair statement of the case in general. 
It is better stated when we say that the aim of 
early Sunday-school teaching was the inculca- 
tion of religious (scriptural and ecclesiastical) 
principles on the assumption that the rudiment- 
ary elements of secular learning were more or 
less neglected. 

Shortcoming of Modern Methods. Perhaps 
one great fault of modern religious instruction 
is the assumption that such elementary educa- 
tion is everywhere present and applied. Cer- 
tain it is that in most Sunday-schools now- 
adays, there is a woeful failure on the part of 
many pupils to grasp mentally even the context 
of the lesson assigned. The study of words 
would often be of better effect in present day 
religious instruction than the effort to incul- 
cate such lessons as moral truths. 

Early Teaching Monitorial. Again, as to 
methods, it is to be noted, in general, that the 
early teaching does differ widely from that of 
the present in that it was entirely catechetical 
and monitorial rather than hortatory. The 
data here given are taken from the scheme, 
printed in 1827, of the General Protestant 
Episcopal Sunday School Union, which com- 



270 The Sunday-School. 

bined and succeeded those of the earlier Sun- 
day And Adult Societies and other Sunday- 
school organizations. It is therefore fairly rep- 
resentative of the earlier Sunday-school teach- 
ing. It was stated in the Constitution that Sun- 
day-schools were only an extended species of 
catechetical instruction. The Sunday-school les- 
son was not a moral disquisition. It was an 
explanatory exposition of the language of Scrip- 
ture, of ecclesiastical text books and of histor- 
ical statements. 

Use of the Church Service. Exhortation was 
received at the church services, which each 
scholar and teacher was always supposed to 
attend. Half the duty of the! teachers was 
monitorial, keeping the children orderly at 
these services. 

First Work Oral and Memoriter. Of the f our 

hours devoted each Sunday to the Sunday-school 
sessions, three were purely didactic, giving 
opportunity for three recitations (aggregating 
one hour and a half) each morning and after- 
noon. In the lower grades the teaching was 
largely oral and much of the work was memor- 
izing. Those who did not know their letters 
were made to learn the alphabet and to apply 
it to the reading and committing to memory of 



Courses of Study and Text Books. 271 

short Bible texts, children's hymns and easy 
questions on the catechism. 

Dearth of American Text Books. At first 
there was a dearth of text books by American 
authors. English publications were therefore 
imported. The systems of Bell and Lancaster 
were used intact in a few schools. Oftener 
these systems were modified and adapted more 
to religious work. A series of Spelling Books 
compiled by the London Sunday School Union, 
were popular. Of frequent use was a series of 
Scripture Lessons, forming an abstract of Bis- 
hop Gastrell's Christian Institutes, containing 
a complete system of the doctrines and precepts 
of the Gospel in a connected series of Scripture 
texts arranged under appropriate heads and 
graded according to the number of syllables in 
the words. 

The Lack Quickly Supplied. In a few years 
American literature for this purpose abounded. 
Several series of Primers and Spelling Books 
with material drawn exclusively from the Scrip- 
tures were soon published in this country, as 
well as text books of higher grade. The first 
attempt at a Uniform Series of Scripture Les- 
sons has been mentioned. It was entitled Ques- 
tions and Answers on the Historical Parts of 



272 The Sunday-School. 

the New Testament, and was intended for all 
the Church Sunday-schools of Philadelphia. 
Its author was a lady of St. Peter's Church. 

Complete Scheme of Lessons in 1826. The 

following is a complete scheme of lessons for the 
various grades as perfected by the authorities 
of the Protestant Episcopal General Sunday 
School Union in 1826: 

The First Class had (mornings and after- 
noons) 

1. Letters of the alphabet. 

2. Catechism No. 1 — A Scripture cate- 

chism with brief glosses on the most 
difficult words and metaphors. 

3. Short morning and evening prayers 
for daily use to be memorized. 

The Second Class had 

1. Heading in Protestant Episcopal Sun- 
School Book No. 1, consisting of 

Scripture lessons and fundamental 
truths of Christianity in words of one 
and two syllables. 

2. Catechism No. 1, as in first class. 

3. Short prayers. 



Courses of Study and Text Books. 273 

The Third Class had 

1. Heading in P. E. 8. 8. Book No. 2, 

containing the History of Joseph with 
brief glosses on the most difficult words 
and sentences. 

2. Catechism No. 2.— The Church Cate- 
chism broken into short questions and 
answers. Occasionally spelling. 

3. Short prayers. 

The Fourth Class had 

1. Eeading in P. E. 8. 8. Book No. 3, 

containing the Sermon on the Mount 
with glosses on the most difficult 
words and metaphors. 

2. Occasionally to spell. 

3. Catechism No. 2, as in the third class. 

The Fifth Class had 

1. Reading in P. E. 8. 8. Book No. 4, 

containing Mrs. Trimmer's Lessons on 
Church History, with slight additions. 

2. Catechism No. 2, as in the third class. 

3. Collects for the several Sundays in 
the year. 



274 The Sunday-School. 

The Sixth Class had 

1. The Epistles and Gospels for the sev- 
eral Sundays. 

2. Catechism No. 3, or Bishop Hobart's 

Catechism — an explanation and en- 
largement of the Church Catechism. 

3. The use of the liturgy with Rudd's 
Questions on the Common Prayer. 

The Seventh Class had 

Select portions of the Old and New Testa- 
ments. 

1. Select portions of the Old and New 

Testaments. 

2. Catechism No. 3. 

3. Catechetical Explanation of the Fes- 
tivals and Fasts of the Church year. 

4. Harmony of the Creeds with Scripture 
proofs; Illustrations of the Lord's 
Prayer ', and the Plan of Salvation, 
chiefly from Stonehouse. 

5. Bishop Hobart's Companion to the 

Booh of Common Prayer, with ques- 
tions. 

6. Christian Doctrine and Practice, set 
forth in words of Scripture — practi- 
cally a text book on Systematic Divin- 
ity. 






Courses of Study and Text Books. 275 

It is to be noted that the exercise in reading 
was not simply the ordinary secular use of the 
readers. In all classes, excepting the first, half 
the time devoted to this subject was occupied in 
the use of printed questions on the several read- 
ers to be answered by the scholars from the 
books themselves. 

Higher Studies Pursued. As time passed 
and graduate or Bible classes were formed, 
other and higher studies were introduced. Some 
of these were: 

Ecclesiology, a familiar text book on which 

was Oroswell's Young Churchman s 

Guide. 
Natural Theology, studied in The Booh of 

Nature, by William Jones. 
Liturgies, amplifying and extending the 

subjects mentioned above. 
Evidences of Christianity as set forth in 

Lloyd's Catechism on Evidences. 
Ethics, studied in several text books of 

more or less devotional character. 
Under the auspices of some Sunday-schools 

Latin classes were started. 

What the Uniform Scheme of Lessons Ac- 
complished. Eor a number of years after the 
introduction of this scheme of lessons it was 



276 The Sunday-School. 

widely adopted by the schools of the Church. 
Nearly two-thirds were reported to have used 
it more or less completely. It proved to be a 
strong unifying force within the Church. As 
has been recorded, it was thought feasible to put 
this uniform system into the hands of the Gen- 
eral Convention and steps were taken to attain 
this end. Whatever else it accomplished, it was 
instrumental in effecting a constant and impor- 
tant improvement in the state of religious in- 
struction within the Church. 

Change of the Tenor of Publications About 
1840. About the year 1840, however, a 
decided change in the educational atmosphere 
of the country (and, we may say, of the world), 
became apparent. The effects of the more mod- 
ern scholarship began to appear in all manner 
of learning. Scriptural, natural, ethical, and 
other themes were attacked from changed stand- 
points. Old text books rapidly went out of 
date. And the ecclesiastical point of view 
shifted. In the forties numerous new Cate- 
chisms appeared, devoted mainly to the matters 
of ritual forms and dress. Dogmatizing on 
ecclesiastical specialties became frequent. 

Change in the Sunday School Routine. 

Then, too, a notable alteration was effected 



Courses of Study and Text Books. 277 

about this time in the Sunday-school routine. 
The abbreviation of the long three hour sessions 
became general. Time was given but for one 
recitation and even that was too meager for 
thorough instruction in the subject. System- 
atic gradation of scholars grew increasingly dif- 
ficult. The consistent pursuit of an extended 
curriculum adapted to such gradation and cov- 
ering six or seven years became well nigh impos- 
sible. The teaching became fragmentary and 
uneven. Graded text books were shelved, while 
short, detached treatises began again to abound. 

Failure of the General Sunday-School 
Union. In this maze of changes the Sunday- 
school Union naturally became somewhat 
embarrassed. Much of its capital lay treasured 
in the stock and plates of the old literature. 
Yet it bravely sought to keep pace with the 
march of progress (or, as some say, of retrogres- 
sion). Whittingham neglected his large parish 
work to write a series of introductory and expos- 
itory volumes on the Books of the New Testa- 
ment. Later he also essayed to put before the 
Church public a catechism of the newer kind. 
But the former were still somewhat old-fash- 
ioned, while the Union diffidently felt itself con- 
strained to reject the latter, though this was 
fairly conservative. In consequence, the Union 



278 The Sunday-School. 

lost many strong friends and much money and 
soon ceased publication, though in its latter days 
it had as its staunch supporters men like Dr. 
Eugene A. Hoffman and Mr. Elbridge T. 
Gerry. 

Work of the Union in Circulating Library 
Books. It is to be remembered, also, that the 
Union had reason to appropriate to itself the 
merit of having largely contributed to the adop- 
tion of "a higher and purer standard of incen- 
tives to the pursuit of excellence" in influenc- 
ing the selection of books for reading, especially 
through the medium of Sunday-school libraries. 
The benefits thus conferred upon tfie youth of 
the Church deserve to be placed among the chief 
proofs of its past usefulness. At that time 
libraries were by no means common. Even in 
the Sunday-schools only those who excelled in 
conduct and recitations were admitted to the 
use of the books assembled there. It was before 
the days of cheap publication. The access to 
good literature was still almost impossible to 
plain people with slender means. The Sunday 
School Unions for many years stood in the 
breach for general enlightenment and paved the 
way for the general dissemination of good liter- 
ature. Our Union with the well-managed Prot- 
estant Episcopal Press stood in the forefront 






Courses of Study and Text Books. 279 

of this movement. In the first five years of its 
existence it had issued nearly eight hundred 
thousand volumes, aggregating almost twenty- 
two million pages of wholesome reading matter, 
exclusive of the periodicals it also published. 
This could not but have had wonderful influ- 
ence on the intellectual and moral, to say noth- 
ing of the spiritual, character of the people of 
that day. 

Also of the E. K. S. In this connection fav- 
orable mention must also be made of the Society 
for the Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge, 
whose numerous and widely circulated publi- 
cations were usually of high spiritual tone. 

No Uniformity in Instruction Prior to 1870. 

During the two decades prior to 1870, which 
may from a certain standpoint be called years 
of literary flux from the heat of the commo- 
tion engendered by German higher criticism 
and Anglican higher churchmanship, uniform- 
ity in religious instruction was practically out 
of question. 

Yet all schools of thought in the religious 
bodies sought to perpetuate their peculiar views 
by improving their children's courses of study. 

Bishop Doane's Series of Lesson Books. 

After the dissolution of the Church's Union, 



280 The Sunday-School. 

Bishop W. C. Doane of the Diocese of Albany 
among others fathered a series of doctrinal and 
devotional booklets for certain phases of 
advanced churchmanship. Other series more 
radical in this direction were published by 
devoted adherents to traditional extremes. 

The Union Lessons. The American Sun- 
day School Union sought to unify the various 
evangelical bodies and fractions by issuing a 
series of Union Lessons, which was remarkable 
for its high spiritual tone and for its practi- 
cal scholarship (though somewhat of ultra con- 
servative type). 

The International Series. But these lessons 
were not in their entirety acceptable to many 
of those for whom they were intended. So, 
while generally preserving the same passages 
studied, they were re-edited by the differing 
bodies to suit their tenets. Later the Inter- 
national Series of Lessons was projected in the 
endeavor further to harmonize and unify evan- 
gelical Christians. 

The Uniform Lesson Series by the Joint Dio- 
cesan Committee. The Uniform Lesson Series, 
begun in 1877 by the Joint Diocesan Committee 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, maintains 



Courses of Study and Text Books. 281 

the general practical scheme of the Interna- 
tional Lessons, devoting most of the work to the 
exposition of some Scriptural selection. But the 
demands of the Prayer Book in arrangement and 
substance are carefully followed. With varying 
requirements for three grades of pupils — 
infant, adolescent and adult — andl (it must 
truly be said) with unexpectedly good results, 
the herculean effort is made to incorporate into 
each weekly lesson of from twenty to fifty min- 
ute! 

(1) a study of the Bible from a spiritual 
standpoint ; 

(2) an almost equally emphasized mastery 
of the Church's Catechism ; 

(3) the inculcation of certain liturgical 
principles, such as the festivals and other prom- 
inent features in the Church year, as well as 
the use of the various liturgical offices ; 

(4) some research into Church History; 

(5) an insight into the salient elements of 
ecclesiastical polity : 

(6) some facts bearing on the methods and 
obligations of missionary enterprise; 

(7) instruction in the way of right living. 

Various Expositions of the Lessons. Besides 
the very elaborate exposition of the lessons in 
this scheme in the American Church Sunday 



282 The Sunday-School. 

School Magazine, the work of the Joint Dio- 
cesan Committee is further promoted by the 
publication of several editions, containing vary- 
ing emendations and arrangements of the les- 
son material and some additions. These have 
been undertaken as individual enterprises by 
proprietors of Church book-stores — and by the 
editors of some Church periodicals. In this 
way the divers schools of thought within the 
Church are considered. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL STAFF TEACHERS AND 

OFFICERS. 

The Problem as to Teachers. Perhaps the 
greatest of all problems connected with reli- 
gious instruction is the status and enrollment of 
the teaching staff. It is one that is seriously 
beginning to agitate the spirit of Sunday-school- 
ing. The nineteenth century closed with multi- 
farious statements of the limitations and bane- 
ful fruits of modern Sunday-school instruction 
in its direct relationship to the instructors. 

Testimony of Two Experts on the Character 
of Modern Teaching. Ten or fifteen years after 
the organization of the American Church Sun- 
day School Institute, when the force of this new 
movement was beginning to show the trend of 
its influences, two distinguished writers pointed 
283 



284 The Sunday-School. 

out the fact that the depth of this renewed 
interest found its truest measure in an equally 
wide-spread misgiving as to the fitness of its 
instruments. The religious world was facing 
in earnest the fact that perhaps the majority of 
the teachers — certainly a great number' — were 
themselves not sufficiently taught, not suffi- 
ciently intelligent, not sufficiently endowed with 
spiritual gifts, not sufficiently ripe in character 
to undertake the truly responsible task devolved 
upon them ; that the best of them were bearing 
this witness against themselves humbly and 
heroically. 

Evils Not the Fault of the Teachers. 

There is no doubt that much of the evil is 
viewed apart from the great compensating feat- 
ure of the system of teaching in vogue. But- 
whatever be said of these unfortunate condi- 
tions, the fault does not lie wholly (or even 
mainly) at the door of the teachers. The dif- 
ficulty of securing them, known to all, often 
leads to drastic measures in the acquisition, so 
that the Sunday-school work of a parish might 
not entirely disintegrate. Pressed into service 
often most reluctantly, feeling their own unfit- 
ness, they have simply undertaken to do the 
best they can. In so far as they have done 
their best, they are troubled with a sense of 



The Sunday-School Staff. 285 

something false in their position. They have 
had no special training for their work. They 
have never been examined as to their qualifica- 
tions. Yet they have undertaken to teach the 
highest of all knowledge. 

Not the Fault of Sunday-School Traditions. 

Xor is the faulty pedagogy to be ascribed to 
the spirit of Sunday-schooling. The early 
institution had paid teachers of adequate exper- 
ience. The early system aimed at the highest 
possible efficiency in teaching and the best pos- 
sible technical results. In fact, the stigma on 
the first Sunday-schools was the dread lest the 
spiritual be sacrificed to the technical. 

Monitorial Teachers Trained. When the 
monitorial systems of Bell and Lancaster pop- 
ularized volunteer teaching, the door was by no 
means opened to untrained instructors. The 
monitorial teachers taught simply what they 
had carefully and laboriously prepared them- 
selves to impart. Their preparation was always 
under the immediate direction of a trained and 
experienced master. Their general knowledge 
and efficiency may not have been of even mod- 
erate compass. Yet for the special lesson of 
the time they had adequately fitted themselves. 
Their work was but a reflection of that of the 



286 The Sunday-School. 

skilled master, whose personality and exper- 
ience they but sought to impress upon their 
scholars. In this way from a technical stand- 
point it was, in general, highly effective. 

Excellent Qualifications of Early Volunteer 
Teachers. Later when the modern system of 
volunteer instruction came into universal prac- 
tice, the high social and educational qualifica- 
tions of the men and women who came forward 
in adequate numbers to volunteer their services 
for class work enabled them to render services 
peculiarly adequate. 

The weakness of present day Sunday-school 
teaching, therefore, is not congenital. It has 
developed as an alien feature in the Sunday- 
school system through the stress of untoward 
conditions from without. The attack on the 
status of the Sunday-school in the forties, no 
doubt, had much to do with it. Thus out of 
fashion, the efficiency of the teaching was fur- 
ther impaired by the growing absorption of the 
well educated and adequately equipped in so- 
ciety affairs, money making, in secular matters 
generally. 

Whatever be the causes, the weakness re- 
mains. The difficulty of securing teachers of 
any degree of fitness grows greater. One of 



The Sunday-School Staff. 287 

the first tasks of twentieth century readjust- 
ment manifestly must be an attempt at the so- 
lution of the vexing problem. 

Many remedies are being tried and more rec- 
ommended. Among them may be mentioned 
the formation of larger (hence fewer) classes 
and the engagement of instructors experienced 
in the science of pedagogy, whose work and re- 
sponsibility would necessarily be enhanced by 
the increase of pupils. Practically consequent 
upon this would be the ultimate abolition of the 
group system in main schools or large promis- 
cuous departments and the adoption of separate 
grade rooms as in present day public schools. 
A number of helpers might be employed in the 
monitorial functions of marking attendance, 
keeping order and so on. This would be a re- 
turn to the early plan of Raikes. 

A second remedy is the more thorough de- 
velopment of the monitorial system. This aims 
at the adequate training of persons spiritually 
moved by a love for their fellows, to a more or 
less degree irrespective of general pedagogic 
fitness. A careful study of Andrew Bell's sys- 
tem reveals marvelous results. One devoted 
central personality by zealous, persevering, 
repetitious training developed highly effective 
instruments. Their efforts, to be sure, were 



288 The Sunday-School. 

concentrated on the lesson of the hour and their 
technical achievement consisted chiefly in the 
rote work of asking printed questions and hear- 
ing printed answers. Yet hack of this was the 
thirst for souls and the willingness to sacrifice 
personal desires in the aim to know enough to 
save men. And it may he possible for the 
twentieth century enthusiast to accomplish even 
greater results than Bell by means of up-to-date 
teachers' training classes and the improved 
morale among teachers in their attendance at 
these. 

A third remedy may be the return (with the 
enlightenment of reform) to the methods of the 
Church Catholic in her post-patristic and me- 
diaeval state of organization. This presents a 
series of orders of men and women set apart 
for the work of religious teaching, like those 
connected with certain nunneries and monas- 
teries. Nor is this advocated simply by per- 
sons holding extreme and technical views of 
Catholicity. It is being practically developed 
in the societies and schools of deaconesses, sis- 
terhoods, brotherhoods, Salvation and Church 
Armies promoted by various evangelical bodies. 
Bible and training schools are multiplying, call- 
ing for the setting apart of a peculiar class of 
religious teachers. Nor does this mean a return 



The Sunday-School Staff. 289 

to former evils, attendant upon the monastic 
system. The establishment of such societies and 
institutions may be wholly consistent with a 
healthy, practical contact with the world and 
the maintenance of a wholesome, optimistic re- 
lationship with all the forces and influences 
that radiate from and control human person- 
ality. 

A fourth remedy may comprehend the meth- 
ods of all the former and certainly seems to pre- 
sent the highest ideal of all. This is set forth 
in the readjustment (under state control) of 
public education on the basis of the Christian 
faith. Its ultimate achievement may seem vis- 
ionary and impracticable. Yet for its sure de- 
velopment it requires but to remove some of the 
incoherence of religious bodies on non-essen- 
tials and to make this less and less a stum- 
bling block in the way of finding a common basis 
on the essentials. 

In the midst of all the discussion regarding 
the most expedient measures the truth must not 
be hidden (and it has been in danger of being 
forgotten by religious organizations) that the 
moral as well as the intellectual future of the 
country lies in the education of the rising gen- 
erations. 'Nor must the meaning fact, that this 
is a Christian nation, ever be carelessly consid- 



290 The Sunday-School. 

ered. The maintenance of Christian standards 
of morality is the bulwark of the republic. And 
these can only be firmly fixed, when the essen- 
tials of the Christian faith are planted deep 
down in the heart of the youth. Any other po- 
sition involves betrayal of the Christ and trea- 
son to our national traditions. 

In the search for the best methods one fact 
will be found to stand out as the stern lesson of 
past history. And that is the relationship be- 
tween teacher and pupil in the formal routine 
of religious instruction must be something more 
than a technical one. This is true for all phases 
of education, but it is especially true of reli- 
gious teaching. The principles of what was 
once much agitated as baptismal education still 
obtain. The world has not outgrown and never 
will outgrow the condition that produced the 
baptismal injunction to the Godparents of the 
children. The three-fold cord, so meaningly 
exploited by the Church's great educators of the 
past generations, is still the ideal relationship 
between the growing youth and those respon- 
sible for their right development. It involves 
ihe various phases of personal relationship, of 
human and spiritual kinship, necessary to the 
adequate training of the rising generations. 

This personal relationship is not the creature 



The Sunday-School Staff. 291 

of a mercenary condition, such as a striving 
merely for salary or some such reward ; nor of a 
condition of compulsion under the stress of 
duty, habit, impressment into service. It is di- 
rectly based on the inviolable law of the Broth- 
erhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. 



ADDITIONAL NOTES. 

(1) Robert May's Efforts to Establish Sunday- 
Schools, (p. 60.) 

May, it must be stated, tried hard to introduce 
into the system of the Philadelphia Evangelical So- 
ciety the Sunday-school with volunteer teachers, and 
the organization, as we have it now. He failed, how- 
ever, because of the opposition of the authorities, 
who persisted in prescribing a week-night for the 
school-work — an arrangement which was by no 
means satisfactory to the teachers. (See Minutes of 
the Phila. Evan Soc.) 

It was these efforts that gave rise to such utter- 
ances as the following, taken from the Second Re- 
port of the Philadelphia Sunday and Adult Society 
(p. 45) : "That zealous minister of Christ and faith- 
ful friend of Sunday-school children, the Rev. Rob- 
ert, who had the honor of introducing the present 
system of Sunday-schools into Philadelphia and 
even into the United States, has finished his labors." 
Yet May's unsuccessful efforts had been antici- 
pated in the First Day Schools as well as in the 
work of other sectarian evangelists in the United 
States. 

(2) The First Church Sunday-School, (p. 63.) 
There are several Sunday-schools today, connected 
with churches, claiming continuous existence from 
their inception, which may be dated back to 1814, 



Additional Notes. 293 

and even earlier. That connected with the First 
Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia is an example. 
Yet there is nothing to show that these institutions 
were in any wise different to the numerous other 
schools of that period under private auspices. While 
they may have been incorporated into the regular 
church-work later on, they were not so connected 
until Sunday-schooling was more in fashion. 

Old St. John's Sunday-school had been organized 
at Commissioners' Hall in the Northern Liberties of 
Philadelphia as far back as 1806 as a First Day 
School. It was a recognized parish agency in 1814. 

(3) Infant Schools, (p. 93.) 

In America quite young children entered the Sun- 
day-schools from the very beginning. In 1817 St. 
George's Sunday-school, New York City, reported 
Junior (or Infant) Departments with three and five 
teachers, respectively, in connection with the Male 
and Female Sunday-schools. These, though separate 
divisions, were kept as integral portions of the Main 
Schools until a decade later, when separate rooms 
were provided. Shortly after that, this separation 
became quite common. 



DEC 3 1904 



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